THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTIONARY
ANTI-IMPERIALISM
POLITICAL STATEMENT
OF THE
WEATHER
UNDERGROUND
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PRAIRIE FIRE
THE POLITICS OF REVOLUTIONARY
ANTI-IMPERIALISM
POLITICAL STATEMENT
OF THE
WEATHER
by Communications Co. UNDER GROUND
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1974
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May 9, 1974
Sisters and brothers,
Here is PRAIRIE FIRE, our political ideology —a strategy for
anti-imperialism and revolution inside the imperial US. It comes out of our
own practice of the last five years and reflects a diversity of experiences.
This paper is not the product of one or two people, nor even a small handful
of us. Rather PRAIRIE FIRE represents the politics and collective efforts of
an organization. It has been the focus of our study groups and our political
education. It has been chewed on and shaped in countless conversations,
struggles and written pages. It has travelled around the country, growing,
developing thru the attempt to understand the shape of world forces and the
revolutionary possibilities before us. The paper was rewritten four times and
collectively adopted as the political statement of the Weather Underground.
The twelve-month process of writing PRAIRIE FIRE, squeezed between
on-going work and practice and action, has now reached a kind of end-point.
A cycle is done.
We undertook this analysis to explain the changes in US and world
conditions since the Vietnam ceasefire and to evaluate the consequences of
the Vietnamese victory. Wre have come some distance in evaluating the
political situation, the priorities for revolutionary work since we began this
writing. Now many more revolutionaries will need to shape and change the
paper. The politics cannot be realized unless and until the content of the
program is activated in thousands of situations, among thousands of people
in the coming period, PRAIRIE FIRE will be a growing thing.
Wre hope the paper opens a dialectic among those in the mass and
clandestine movements: we hope people will take PRAIRIE FIRE as
seriously as we do, study the content and write and publish their views of
the paper as well as their analysis of their own practice. We will respond as
best we can.
Our movement urgently needs a concrete analysis of the particular
conditions of our time and place. We need strategy. We need to battle for a
correct ideology and win people over. In this way we create the conditions
for the development of a successful revolutionary movement and party. We
need a revolutionary communist party in order to lead the struggle, give
coherence and direction to the fight, seize power and build the new society.
Getting from here to there is a process of coming together in a disciplined
way around ideology and strategy, developing an analysis of our real
conditions, mobilizing a base among the US people, building principled
relationships to Third World struggle, and accumulating practice in struggle
against US imperialism.
PRAIRIE FIRE is written to communist-minded people,
independent organizers and anti -imperialists; those who carry the traditions
and lessons of the struggles of the last decade, those who join in the struggles
of today. PRAIRIE FIRE is written to all sisters and brothers who are
engaged in armed struggle against the enemy. It is written to prisoners,
women's groups, collectives, study groups, workers' organizing committees,
communes, GI organizers, consciousness-raising groups, veterans, community
groups and revolutionaries of all kinds; to all who will read, criticize and
bring its content to life in practice. It is written as an argument against those
who oppose action and hold back the struggle.
PRAIRIE FIRE is based on a belief that the duty of a revolutionary
is to make the revolution. This is not an abstraction. It means that
revolutionaries must make a profound commitment to the future of
humanity, apply our limited knowledge and experience to understand an
ever-changing situation, organize the masses of people and build the fight. It
means that struggle and risk and hard work and adversity will become a way of
life, that the only certainty will be constant change, that the only
possibilities are victory or death.
We have only begun. At this time, the unity and consolidation of
anti-imperialist forces around a revolutionary program is an urgent and
pressing strategic necessity. PRAIRIE FIRE is offered as a contribution to
this unity of action and purpose. Now it is in your hands.
for the Weather Underground
Bernardine Dohrn
Billy Ayers
Jeff Jones
Celia Sojourn
CONTENTS:
I. ARM THE SPIRIT
THE BANNER OF CHE
WHY IS REVOLUTION NECESSARY ?
IN THE EARLY STAGES
THE SIXTIES
ACHIEVEMENTS
TURNING POINT
SELF-CRITICISM
TURNING WEAKNESS INTO STRENGTH
OBSTACLES
ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY ERRORS IN OUR
MOVEMENT
SETBACKS INFLICTED BY THE STATE
CONTINUING CRISIS AT HOME
GOVERNMENTAL CRISIS
THE REAL AND PHONY ENERGY CRISIS
WHAT WE THINK
II. VIETNAM 27
MEANING OF THE CEASEFIRE
INTERNATIONAL VICTORY
NATIONAL VICTORY
ALL FOR VIETNAM
SUPPORT THE VIETNAMESE STRUGGLE
FOUR MAIN ISSUES
ATTACKS ON LIBERATED ZONES
NO AID TO THIEU
HEALING THE WOUNDS OF WAR
POLITICAL PRISONERS
A PROGRAM TO FOCUS ON VIETNAM
JUSTICE TO WAR CRIMINALS: AMNESTY FOR
RESISTERS
THE WAR TO EXPLAIN THE WAR
THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY
GOVERNMENT OF SOUTH VIETNAM
III. ON THE ROAD: IMPRESSIONS OF US HISTORY 44
IN THE BEGINNING: Genocide, Slavery, Racism
NATIVE AMERICAN RESISTANCE: The Early Stages
BLACK RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY AND THE RISE OF
THE ABOLITIONIST AND WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS
RECONSTRUCTION AND BETRAYAL
THE OPPOSITION: Miners, Women, Immigrants, Wobblies
THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE COMMUNIST
PARTY
IV. IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS: THE THIRD WORLD 79
MONOPOLY CAPITAL
IMPERIALISM MEANS UNDERDEVELOPMENT
IMPERIALISM MEANS RACISM AND GENOCIDE
IMPERIALISM MEANS SEXISM
NEOCOLONIALISM
DEFEATS FOR NEOCOLONIALISM
VIOLENT COUNTERREVOLUTION
CHANGES IN WORLD POLITICS
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
PUERTO RICO
GUINE -BISSAU
THE PALESTINIAN LIBERATION MOVEMENT
V. IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS: THE HOME FRONT 109
FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
THE ANARCHY OF PRODUCTION
THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE
THE CHANGING MATURE OF THE
WORKING CLASS
BLACK AND OTHER THIRD WORLD PEOPLE IN THE US
THE BLACK NATION
—Institutions of Racism
-Black Culture, Black Power
—Support for Self-determination
NATIVE AMERICANS
THE CHICANO STRUGGLE
THE RISING OF WOMEN
THE CONDITION OF WOMEN
—Homy and Family
—Government Policies
—Culture of Sexism
THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
TASKS FOR REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN
—Overcoming Class Privilege
— Opposing Racism
-Insurgent Institutions
—Militancy
THE YOUTH REBELLION
YOUTH CULTURE
THE ARMED FORCES
VI. AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY
GO TO THE PEOPLE
POLITICS IN COMMAND
INTERNATIONALISM
WOMEN AND REVOLUTION
MILITANCY
REVOLUTION
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A
SINGLE SPARK
CAN START
A PRAIRIE FIRE
Orje/
I. ARM THE SPIRIT
That is good, because revolutionary spirit must always
be present, revolutionary spirit must reveal itself. We must
arm our spirit. When the spirit is armed, the people are strong.
Fidel Castro
Santiago, Chile
November 2<K 1971
The unique and fundamental condition of (his time is the decline of
US imperialism. Our society is in social and economic crisis arid assumptions
about the US are turned on their heads. These are hard conditions to live
through. But they are favorable for the people and for revolution.
These conditions of constant change demand the weapon of theory.
Like people everywhere, we are analyzing how to bring to life the potential
forces which can destroy LS imperialism.
We are a guerrilla organization. We are communist women and men,
underground in the United States for more than four years.' We are deeply
affected by the historic events of our time in the struggle against US
imperialism.
Our intention is to disrupt the empire ... to incapacitate it, to put
pressure on the cracks, to make it hard to carry out its bloody functioning
against the people of the world, to join the world struggle, to attack from
the inside.
Our intention is to engage the enemy . . . to wear away at him, to
harass him, to isolate him, to expose every weakness, to pounce, to reveal his
vulnerability.
Our intention is to encourage the people ... to provoke leaps in
confidence and consciousness, to stir the imagination, to popularize power,
to agitate, to organize, to join in every way possible the people's day-to-day
struggles.
Our intention is to forge an underground ... a clandestine political
organization engaged in every form of struggle, protected from the eyes and
weapons of the state, a base against repression, to accumulate lessons,
experience and constant practice, a base from which to attack.
]
THE BANNER OF CHE
The only path to the final defeat of imperial ism and the building of
socialism is revolutionary war. Revolution is the most powerful resource of
the people. To wait, to not prepare people for the fight, is to seriously
mislead about what kind of fierce struggle lies ahead.
Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted. It. includes
mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and
economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony
with the armed struggle.
Without mass struggle there can be no revolution.
Without armed struggle there can be no victory.
It will not be immediate, for the enemy is entrenched and
intractable. It will require lengthy, deliberate political and armed struggle
to build the organized power of the people and io wear away a! the power of
the enemy. Many people have given their lives in this struggle and many
more will have to. Paradoxically, this protracted struggle is the shortest and
least costly road to revolution.
We are at an early stage, going from small to large. The mass armed
capability which will destroy the enemy has its beginnings in armed action.
It matures unevenly, with setbacks and at great cost. It will not spring
full-blown on the scene at the magical moment of insurrection. We cannot
leave the organizing and preparation for armed struggle to some more perfect
future time. It would be suicidal. There is no predetermined model for
revolution —we are always figuring it out. But for some, armed struggle is
always too soon, although it is underway here and around the world.
We made the choice to become a guerrilla organization at a time
when the Vietnamese were fighting a heroic people's war, defeating half a
million US troops and the most technologically advanced military power. In
our own hemisphere, Che Guevara urged that we "create two, three, many
Vietnams," to destroy US imperialism by cutting it off in the Third World
tentacle by tentacle, and opening another front within the US itself. At
home, the struggle and insurrection of the Black liberation movement
heightened our commitment to fight alongside the determined enemies of
the empire.
This defined our international responsibility and our duty as white
revolutionaries inside the oppressor nation. We are part of a wave of
revolution sparked by the Black liberation struggle, by the death of Che in
Bolivia in 1967, and by people's war in Vietnam. This period forged our
belief in the revolutionary necessity of clandestine organization and armed
struggle.
WHY IS REVOLUTION NECESSARY
Revolution is a fight by the people for power. It is a changing of
power in which existing social and economic relations are turned upside
down. It is a fight for who run things, in particular, for control by the
people of what we communists call the means of production -the means by
which people eat, work, protect themselves from the cold and the rain, get
around, raise children and build.
The imperialists now control the means by which these necessities of
... get produced and distributed. They determine what gets produced,
;-..i4 cost in human effort, under what conditions, and who gets what's
■ ■. ....-ed. This is complete control over people's lives. It is economic power
"."ir more. It involves and implicates people in a system over which they
_ - Li ! tie control; a system which includes unprecedented slaughter
■ '.[ill continuous wars, genocide, the violent suppression of Black, Puerto
r.r.. Chicano, and Indian people, the subjugation of women, daily conl.ro!
; -xtvaction of maximum profit from the people's work, the development
fantastic arsenal of weapons (including nuclear arms) in the control of
.- imperialists, It intimately affects day-to-day behavior —thoughts, values,
_t r; tial and hopes.
Only the pressure of the struggle of the mass of people humanizes
:.:- system at all.
It is an illusion that imperialism will decay peacefully. Imperialism
- meant constant war. Imperialists defend their control of the means of life
_T:i terrible force. There is no reason to believe they will become humane or
_ Jiiquish power. As matters deteriorate for imperialism, there is every
.-r.:?on to believe they will tighten control, pass their contradictions on to
-.Tie people, and struggle for every last bit of power, To not prepare the
people for this struggle is to disarm them ideologically and physically and to
perpetrate a cruel hoax.
IN THE EARLY STAGES
Armed struggle has come into being in the United States. It is an
indication of growth that our movement has developed clandestine
organizations and that we are learning how to fight.
The development of guerrilla organization and armed activity against
the state is most advanced in the Black community, where the tradition and
necessity for resistance is highest. The crises of the society provide the
training grounds; for Third World people the conditions of prison, the
army, the streets and most oppressive jobs produce warriors, political
theorists, and active strategists.
The Black Liberation Army —fighting for three years under ruthless
attack by the state— the fighters in prisons, and recently the Symbionese
Liberation Army are leading forces in the development of the armed struggle
and political consciousness, respected by ourselves and other revolutionaries.
At this early stage in the armed and clandestine struggle, our forms
of combat and confrontation are few and precise. Our organized forces are
small, the enemy's forces are huge. We live inside the oppressor nation,
particularly suited to urban guerrilla warfare. We are strategically situated in
the nerve centers of the international empire, where the institutions and
symbols of imperial power are concentrated. The cities will be a major
battleground, for the overwhelming majority of people live in the cities; the
cities are our terrain.
We believe that carrying out armed struggle will affect the people's
consciousness of the nature of the struggle against the state. By beginning
the armed struggle, the awareness of its necessity will be furthered. This is no
less true in the US than in other countries throughout the uorld.
Revolutionary action generates revolutionary consciousness; growing
consciousness develops revolutionary action. Action teaches the lessons of
fighting, and demonstrates that armed struggle is possible.
We are building a foundation. In four years of armed work, we have
come to appreciate the complexity of doing it right and the difficulty of
sustaining it. These arc contradictions we are working with:
—We live in a whirlwind; nonetheless, time is on the side of the
guerrillas. Fighting the enemy is urgent, and we have a duty to do all we can.
Yet it takes time to win the people's trust; it takes time to build an
organization capable of surviving the hunt; it takes time to recover and learn
from mistakes, to prepare, train, study and investigate. This is an
observation. It is not offered as an argument for delay.
—There is constant resolution between carrying forward the struggle
and the necessity of preserving valuable cadre and supporters. Sometimes
this is- not a matter of choice —the guerrillas arc forced, because of the
torture and murder committed by the repressive apparatus, to escalate and
move beyond what can be immediately sustained.
—Armed struggle brings the resistance to a sharper and deeper level
of development. The greater the resistance, the greater will be the force
and scope of the state repression brought to bear upon the people. When
resistance is at a high level, the enemy takes measures against the people. But
treading lightly will not assuage the rulers. Violent repression is built into the
status quo. Guerrilla strategy has to resolve the contradiction between the
necessary progress of the struggle and what the people can sustain at any
given time.
— Armed actions push forward people's consciousness and
commitment: they are a great teacher and example. Yet they must be clearly
understandable to the people, identify our enemy precisely, and overcome
his massive lies and propaganda.
Attacks by the Weather Underground have been focused and
specific. These actions were a catalyst for thousands of politically-directed
armed actions between 1970 and 1972, almost all of which complemented
mass struggles.
These hombings were carried out by the Weather Underground:
—To retaliate for the most savage criminal attacks against Black and
Third World people, especially by the police apparatus:
Haymarkct police statue, Chicago, October 1969 and October 1970;
Chicago police cars, following the murder of Fred Hampton and
Mark Clark, December 1969;
New York City Police Ileadquaters, June 1970;
Marin County Courthouse, following the murder of Jonathan
Jackson, William Christmas and James McClain, August 1970;
Long Island City Courthouse, in Queens, in solidarity with prison
revolts taking place in New York City, October 1970;
Department of Corrections in San Francisco and
Office of California Prisons in Sacramento, for the murder of
George Jackson in San Quentin, August 1971;
Department of Corrections in Albany, N.Y., for the murder and
assault against the prisoners of Attica, September 1971;
103rd Precinct of the New York City police, for the murder of
10-year-old Clifford Clover, May 1973 . . .
••
••
—To disrupt and agitate against US aggression and terror against
Vietnam and the Third World:
•• Harvard war research Center for International Affairs, Proud Eagle
Tribe (women's brigade), October 1970;
•• US Capitol, after the invasion of Laos, March 1971;
•• MIT research center, William Bundy's office, Proud Eagle Tribe
(women's brigade), October 1971;
•• The Pentagon, after the bombing of Hanoi and mining of the
harbors of North Vietnam, May 1972;
•• Draft and recruiting centers;
•• ROTC buildings;
•• ITT Latin America Headquarters, following the fascist
counter-revolution in Chile, September 1973 , . .
—To expose and focus attention against the power and institutions
which most cruelty oppress, exploit and delude the people:
•• National Guard Headquarters, Washington, D.C., after the murders
at Jackson State and'Kent State, May 1970;
• • Presidio Army Base and MP Station, San Francisco, July 26, 1970;
•• Federal Offices of HEW (Health, Education and Welfare), (women's
brigade), San Francisco, March 1974;
•• Liberation of Timothy Leary trom Calif ornia Men 's Colony, San Luis
Obispo, September 1970 . . .
Mass struggle and movements are not mere spectators in
revolutionary war; armed struggle cannot become a spectacle. It is the
responsibility of mass leaders and organizations to encourage and support
revolutionary armed struggle, in open as well as quiet ways. Actions are more
powerful when they are explained and defended. The political thrust of each
armed intervention can be publicly championed and built on. Parallel mass
support will further both the mass and military struggle.
There arc many faces to militant resistance and fighting, a
continuum between guerrilla and mass wrork. An examination of recent
history points to: acts of resistance . . . draft card burnings, sabotage in the
military, on the job, in government, and attacks on the police; mass
demonstrations . . . Marches on the Pentagon, Stop the Draft Week, African
Liberation Day rallies. International Women's Day marches, Chicano
Moratorium marches; demands for control and power through seizures of
institutions . . . community control of hospitals and schools, occupations of1
land such as Wounded Knee, or symbols such as the Statue of Liberty,
People's Park, prison rebellions and takeovers: clandestine
propaganda . . . spray painting, pouring blood on draft files, the Media, Pa.
FBI ripoff ; popular rebellion . . , W'atts, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Newark;
outrage expressed violently and collectively . . . jackson/Kent/Cambodia,
bank burning at Isla Vista, TDA's, Days of Rage.
There are connecting lines between these different forms of fighting.
All are forms of resistance by the people, and forms of attack against the
state. Militancy and armed struggle are consistent threads in revolutionary
movements -they cannot be wished or forced, away. They will continue to
be practiced as long as imperialism exists. Together they constitute the
fullness of revolutionary war.
The greater pari of the revolution remains before us. We need to
evaluate our strengths and weaknesses to go on from here. Our present
strategy is rooted in our interpretation of the struggle? of the last fourteen
years.
THE SIXTIES
Denunciations of the struggles of the sixties as a failure do the
enemy's work. These surrenders are a live burial of our people's great
moments, and weaken the future by poisoning the lessons of the past. The
movement produced some of the highest expressions of international
solidarity and commitment in an oppressor nation. Weaknesses there were
plenty. We cannot evade them, ignore them nor be reluctant to learn from
them. But the lessons won't be drawn apart from the context —where we
were coming from and how far we still have to go to revolutionize ourselves
and society.
ACHIEVEMENTS
The struggles of the 60's changed everything, and we strongly affirm
the general thrust and direction of the politics and movements of the last
decade. The achievements only represent beginnings, but they arc not small:
Desanetification of the empire. The lesson that the US imperial
system is not permanently superior, not invincible even at the height of its
power, not loved by the people of the world, and not satisfying the needs of
the great majority of the US people —this is of incalculable importance to
the awakening of consciousness. In this year of cynicism about the US rulers
it is hard to remember the power of the myths of US invincibility and
democracy which governed our people at the beginning of the 60's.
Although US global aims had already been rocked by the success of the
Chinese Revolution in 1949, the struggles for African independence through
the 1950's and the failure to win in Korea, the implications of all this were
not known by the US people. The forces unleashed at Little Rock and
Montgomery and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution were already
burrowing away at the edifice of US superiority, yet we were still asleep.
People now see that imperialism is warlike, with an economy based
on the arms race, defense spending and a need to support expansion with the
bloodiest interventions in history. People understand corporate greed: the
criminal policies of ITT, United Fruit, Standard Oil, Gull' Oil, Dow
Chemical, Chase Manhattan, Safeway, and Honeywell. People can now see
the hypocrisy of US freedom, justice and democracy —high sounding words
masking the fact of US exploitation, aggression and counter-revolution.
Material contribution to Vietnamese victory. The anti-war
movement made a significant contribution toward Forcing the US
government to withdraw troops from Vietnam. As part of the worldwide
united front against imperialism our movement helped prevent the use of
nuclear weapons against Vietnam, a major assault on the dike system, or an
invasion of the North. The ruling class is not restrained by scruples —only by
their estimation of the political consequences of their actions. The imperial
army became an unreliable tool of domination. There were serious
interruptions in the functioning of the draft. In addition, part of the anti-war
movement saw through the blinders of national chauvinism and brought a
glimpse to the US people of the righteousness and humanity of the so-called
'enemy."
Opposition to racism. The spirit of resistance inside the US was
rekindled by Black people. The power and strategy of the civil rights
movement, SNCC, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party affected all other
rebellion. They created a form of struggle "called direct action; awoke a
common identity, history and dignity for Black people as a colonized and
oppressed people within the US; drew out and revealed the enemy through a
series of just and undeniable demands such as the vote, equal education, the
right to self-defense, and an end to Jim Crow. The police, the troops, the
sheriffs, the mass arrests and assassinations were the official response. The
Black movement was pushed forward into a revolutionary movement for
political power, open rebellion and confrontation with the racism of white
people and the racism of institutions.
Growth of insurgent cultures. Young women and men fighting to be
human beings in the midst of disgusting and crushing social forms found
ourselves in opposition to empire. Since World War II imperialism sought to
tame its youth thru tracked education, the draft, [he oppression of
women. These conditions produced a profound alienation in work, school,
family, and an openness to revolutionary alternative. The youth revolt and
the women's movement moved practically an entire generation on one level
or another. This means a substantial sector wras torn away from sexist and
competitive culture and gave birth to new cultures, fragile bu! real -cultures
in opposition to the system. The overthrowing of rotten values of male
supremacy, eonsumerism, passivity, respect ability and the rat race, was a
wonderful advance. For women working, for wromen forced into the
marriage marketplace, trapped in oppressive relationships, raising children
alone, the women's movement brought a new sense of self-worth and
dignity; it explained the conditions of women's oppression. We began to
create solidarity among women.
Challenge to inaction. We inherited a deadening ideology of
coiifornnty and gradualism. Our first protests were law-abiding and
peaceful. But !he treacherous nature of US power was revealed as we began
to comprehend Hiroshima, napalm, slavery, lynching, capital punishment,
rape, Indian reservations. We came to see that change is violently opposed
every step of the way. We stood up and defied propriety, the state and the
law, in street demonstrations and outrageous actions. Militant confrontation
politics transformed us, we broke with a powerless past. We saw popular
uprisings, armed revolution, people's war, and guerrilla combat around the
world. We realized the power of armed self-defense, mass rebellion and
revolutionary violence in the Black movement. As our own protest elicited
teargas, prison and bullets, we recognized the need to fight and the terrible
cost of not doing all we possibly can.
TURNING POINT
The year 1968 was a high point and a turning point. It is not
surprising that the maturing of the movement took place at a time when the
world was in flames. 500,000 US troops were dealt a staggering blow by the
Vietnamese popular forces during Tet. Armed struggle raged throughout
Latin America and the Palestinian liberation forces emerged in the Mideast.
Student movements in France and throughout the industrialized world were
in full revolt, challenging their own governments and demonstrating open
solidarity with the people of the world. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was
unleashing a new dimension to class struggle.
The movement emerged with a growing revolutionary consciousness
that it was involved in a battle for power. This grew out of experience. Black
Power had become the slogan for the Black liberation movement, and its
political thrust transformed the civil rights movement. Black power was
applied in persistent struggles for community control of schools, in
rebellions in 60 cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King, by
Black students occupying universities, sometimes with arms, and in the
emergence of the Black Panther Party,
We also came to recognize that issues which once seemed separate
had a relationship to one another. Imperialism was "discovered" as a whole,
one system. This was a tremendous political breakthrough -it made sense of
the world and our own experience, The same school which tracked students
by sex, race and class into the appropriate niche, turned out to own slums in
the Black community and to develop anti-personnel weapons and strategies
against revolution— to be in fact a tool of the corporations and the military.
We were up against a ruling class, and it made no sense to ask them
to reform themselves. Our rebellion had led us to revolution —a long and
many-sided struggle for power.
SDS was a leading anti-imperialist organization in this movement.
Historically, students play an advanced and militant role in anti-imperialist
struggle, opposing war and racial injustice. The revolt at Columbia University
was a catalyst which exploded the previous era of resistance into a popular
revolutionary movement of students and young people. The street battles at
the Democratic National Convention in Chicago several months later led to
further occupations and demonstrations involving hundreds of thousandsof
militants. The demonstrations built on each other; each struggle was unique
and beautiful. The vitality of SDS was rooted in its local experiences and the
application of national programs to different regions and conditions
—applying the lessons of Columbia, films on Cuba, building alliances with a
Black Student Union. The taste of liberation, the intense struggles,
transformed our identifications, our lives.
At this point, some new contradictions appeared.
The slate set into motion a plan to discredit, divide and set back the
movement. The May 1968 j. Edgar Hoover counterinsurgency memo reveals
a national plan to "expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize the activities of
the various New Left organizations, their leadership and adherents."
Infiltration and sabotage were carried out by a variety of police agents,
including the FBI, the Nixon-Mitchell team, military intelligence, and local
red squads. As always the attack was focused on the Black liberation
movement and included violent assaults against Black communities and
leaders, particularly the Black Panther Party.
With enormous growth of membership, militancy and consciousness
after the 1968 demonstrations in Chicago, SDS was faced with several urgent
necessities: to draw hroader masses of people into the struggle, and also to
organize our cadre and transform ourselves into a force which could
eventually contend for power. These necessities coexisted uneasily. What
were the roads taken at this juncture ?
Our strategy was the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM). It was
aimed at extending the movement among young people —to expand its base
and class character, to mobilize Lhose affected by the draft, the army,
unemployment, schools, prisons, into anti-imperialist struggle. RYM was a
transitional strategy to maintain the militant mass base on the campuses,
while we deepened our base among the working class. Young people's
openness and consciousness/identification with militant anti-imperialism was
a strategic strength. This movement continued to grow spontaneously, even
after the decline of SDS.
This politics was opposed by an opportunist politics that took the
form of economism. Economismappears in every revolutionary movement as
the reduction of revolution to a struggle for purely economic gains.
Economism has many masks. It was then expressed in a leftish form of
"going to the workers," not by creating revolutionary consciousness and
action but by sacrificing principle in the hope of gaining a place in the labor
movement. This is a corrupt politics, proven bankrupt again and again. In the
IIS, where many of the people who are exploited by imperialism also receive
benefits from the super-exploitation of the colonies, economism feeds the
idea that people here can be free while other oppressed people are still under
the yoke of US imperialism.
Our deep political concern was the historic tendency of the white
left to abandon militant anti-imperialism and anti-racism —principled
support for Third World struggle— in search of easy integration with the
masses. It is difficult to synthesize militant anti-imperialism with a mass base
among oppressor-nation people because of the whole fabric of relative
social/ materia I white-skin privilege. Much of the movement resolved this
contradiction in the direction of opportunism around race. This was the
main error of the period, deeply rooted in US radical history.
A comparable example was the student power movement. Some
argued that the demand for student's rights and power would become
revolutionary in and of itself. This is not true. The chauvinism of "student
power" demands by white students ignored the claims of university workers,
the community, and the Third World people who would be the victims of
university-researched weapons and programs. This demand encouraged
narrow concern for a relatively privileged sector at the expense of the more
oppressed. But when the student revolts actively allied with other
movements in the interests of the most oppressed peoples against the
common enemy, they became a serious threat to the empire. When each
movement only sees its own claims arid interests in isolation from other
movements, they play themselves out, one after the other.
Another major factor at this point was the rebellion of women
against sexism in the society and in the left. The left is not immune from the
sexism which pervades US society: the oppressor culture persists and must
be opposed and fought again and again. This requires an active commitment
to anti-sexism. In the late sixties and early seventies many women left the
anti-imperialist movement and built a separate women's movement. Sisters
inside —and now outside— the anti-imperiliast movement began to force men
to deal with their sexist practice. These were absolutely necessary advances.
The struggles against sexism did not only mean criticism and change of
individual practice, they also transformed the overall analysis of the left. The
contradiction was that the women's movement, rejecting sexist and
authoritarian leadership, raised blanket challenges to all forms of leadership
and organization in the movement, good and had, and failed at that point to
build lasting organizations to carry on the task of strong determined
anti-imperialist struggle.
SDS was torn by these internal and external dynamics. It was
becoming an organization of revolutionaries, anti-imperialist activists. This
was recognized by the state which moved to disrupt it. Major ideological
struggles about the correct path to transforming SDS into a broader mass
organization polarized rapidly, while simultaneously the urgent necessity to
join the struggle against imperialism in a serious and armed way was
heightened by the Vietnam War and the liberation movement of Black
people. Things were in great turmoil and a continuous process of change.
SELF-CRITICISM
We have to learn from our mistakes. Unsorting errors and correct
understandings, reassessing strengths and weaknesses, are a revolutionary
responsibility. This is because our errors have consequences for the ability to
find the right road, for trust and confidence in relationship with the people,
and also for the state which learns from our errors and will use them against
us. All movements make mistakes. Those which recover from their mistakes
have been able to act with audacity and move forward with the people. But
errors must first be recognized and corrected; this is a test of our
movement's strength.
We were correct in our decision to prepare and build the armed
struggle. There is a strategic necessity to build underground movement, to
learn to fight through fighting, to pull forward into the conflict. There is a
need to develop militant action, and from militant action to develop guerrilla
activity. This beginning involved a confrontation with privilege and
inhibition and was impolite, rough, disruptive and disorderly. It was an
essential step forward, and could not be held back for some "perfect
moment." Three of our comrades gave their lives to begin the armed struggle
—Diana Oughton, Teddy Gold, and Terry Robbins. By March 1970, a base
from which to carry out guerrilla and underground actions had been
estabhshed.
We were wrong in failing to realize the possibility and strategic
necessity of involving masses of people in anti -imperialist action and
organization. We fixed our vision only on white people's complicity with
empire, with the silence in the face of escalating terror and blatant murder of
Black revolutionaries. We let go of our identification with the people -the
promise, the yearnings, the defeats.
This error had two consequences.
10
In the course of preparing for armed struggle in late 1969 we began
mistaking friends for enemies. We applied the strictest standards of
willingness to risk everything to comrades and allies, as well as to the real
opportunists who represented the politics of retreat. We attacked those who
could not come along the whole way, sometimes just because they were not
ready to support everything we said and did. We did not learn from
meaningful criticism from comrades.
We made the mistake of deemphasizing the importance of mass
work and lost sight of our long-standing commitment to mass struggle. The
militancy and commitment of the Days of Rage and the initiation of armed
actions contributed to andpushed forwardrnass struggle;the continuous revolt
in the armed forces, the Justice Department demonstration in November
1969, TDA's (The Day After demonstrations), Isla Vista, culminating in
jackson/Kent/Cambodia in the spring of 1970. Conditions were ripe. The
mass movement continued to grow, broaden and escalate at the same time
[hat mass organizations began to fall apart, waver and dissolve.
Reaffirming the importance of mass movement and political as
well as military struggle, we wrote New Morning in December 1970, But
New Morning gave uncritical support to youth culture and came to represent
a repudiation of revolutionary violence. The Panther 21 wrote a generous
and fighting criticism of New Morning from prison, which warned us against
putting down our weapons. They correctly pointed to the necessity to
continue to fight and our need to teach our people to fight. By failing to
answer, wc lost an opportunity to engage in dialogue with these brave and
dedicated comrades.
TURNING WEAKNESS INTO STRENGTH
Now the movement is disorganized, divided and defensive, unable
to fulfill the whole potential to learn and to lead. There has been relatively
little organized mass action and relatively great disunity within our
movement in the last three years. In the movement times are hard. On the
other hand, the opportunity for change and organizing among millions of
poor, unemployed and working people, among women, among youth, is
great. The continuing social crises are accelerating the process of social
dislocation, and people are opening to the possibility of revolutionary
consciousness.
Objectiveiconditions do not produce revolution themselves. In times
of crisis and change people's fears and discontents and hopes can be
mobilized in different directions —toward opiates of all sorts, reform,
right-wing movements and war. That is why revolutionary organization,
leadership and example are required to call the discontent into life and
action, to seize the time.
There are serious problems and barriers to revolutionary growth
now facing us, which we have to uncover and took in the face. Some are
setbacks inflicted by the state; some are obstacles —weaknesses and
contradictions among us; some are anti -revolutionary currents and errors
within the movement.
11
OBSTACLES
A nti -organization tendencies. The lack of a national organization,
embracing and based in popular movements, unified around anti-imperialism
is a most severe weakness. A generation of cadre was built in the struggles of
the 60's and early 70's. People need organization. Organization unites, gives
direction and breadth to particular political work. The lack of organization
affects all other problems.
It leaves people with no place to go to join the struggle, no way to
connect to something larger than ourselves, no form for struggling and
resolving our other problems. Good local work or work focused around one
single issue suffers from the lack of national, overall organization.
The failures and the dissolution of previous organizations have
served as an excuse for anti-organizational tendencies: attacking and
undermining all forms of organization. The idea prevails that organization
means giving up individual integrity, or is irretrievably sexist/male
dominated, or is by definition oppressive. Like every other revolutionary
movement on earth, we desperately need good organizations, strong and
healthy, to embody the struggle and direct our energies like a spear.
Cynicism . The subjective mood of surrender and powerlessness is
expressed in various repudiations of the 60's or turning to idealistic Utopian
solutions. Cynicism coincides with extreme individualism, expects the
revolution to somehow be pure, and victories easy. We also face adversity:
some activists feel extremely demoralized, some feel burned out from the
difficulties of revolutionary work. We must help each other through pain and
breakdown, through separation, loss and death. We must care for the
physical and mental health of the revolutionary community, for those in
prison, for the raising of the children and the sustenance of the older people.
At the same time as we recognize the real difficulties, we nourish our
revolutionary spirit, commit every fiber of our lives to the struggle.
Sexism. The full participation and leadership of women is necessary
for suecesful and healthy revolution. Revolutionary organizations must
recognize the struggle for women's liberation as a fundamental political
revolution and must repudiate the intolerable backwardness of all forms of
sexism. The development of the independent women's movement as well as
active struggle against the institutions and ideas of sexism are the basis for
insuring that the revolution genuinely empowers women.
Racism. The left must make clear at every point its unswerving and
mik'tant support for the liberation of Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Native
American and all Third World peoples. It must refuse to compromise this
active support for short-term "gains," or to win the approval of whites we
are trying to organize at the workshop, in the schools or the communities.
This is true for the whole movement and for every individual in the
movement. The creation of an anti-racist white movement is the necessary
foundation for the functional unity of Third World and white enemies of the
empire. Anti-racist organizing and action can create this unity. Where this
kind of work has begun, it should be broadened and extended.
12
ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY ERRORS IN THE MOVEMENT
There are two currents of thought and activity that conspire to hold
back the power of the movement. They are American exceptionalism and
reformism. These tendencies often unite and reinforce each other. They are
subtly embedded in various tendencies and accepted truisms in the left, and
they are strategically put forward by the enemy to deflect us. They are both
racist in effect.
American exceptionalism is the assumption that for one reason or
another —US "technological superiority," the "post-scarcity economy." the
"system of democracy," our "advanced consciousness"— our revolutionary
struggle is not subject to the same general conditions and the same general
necessities as others.
It assumes different faces. One is American superiority, a kind of
cultural chauvinism. This is characterized by the acceptance of some of these
positions: that imperialism is something different from and unnecessary to
capitalism, something that happens outside the US, incidental to the struggle
here; US society is stable and even, not subject to the great dislocations and
wrenching changes sweeping the world; our feminist consciousness is more
advanced that that of women in Third World liberation movements or in
Cuba or Vietnam; our revolution will be a consciousness revolution on the
plane of personal relations and sexuality —we have passed beyond anything
as "old fashioned" as socialism.
Of course there are new conditions and unique aspects to US
society. Our revolution makes its own contributions. But we have to elicit
the class consciousness and struggle out from beneath layers of false
consciousness, resignation and tearfulness. Our women's movement is a great
new vital movement, but wc can also learn much from women of the Third
World about who our enemy is and how to mobilize to fight him. The
repudiation of cultural oppression isn't everything, but it does constitute a
serious break with the brain-washing control of empire.
As a people we are saturated with the myth of American
superiority. As a revolutionary people, we must take our place in the human
community resolutely opposed to all expressions of arrogance.
Another form of American exceptionalism is rejecting forms of
struggle for the US which are obviously necessary in other parts of the
world. Some people actually defend the taking up of arms by the
Vietnamese people, the Chilean workers or the Chinese Revolution —but
preserve the territory within US borders from the same laws and forces
which produce, revolution everywhere else. This is half-hearted
internationalism. Colossal arrogance is concealed in the self-deception that
Third World people and socialist countries can and must do the fighting
while we have some kind of free ride, tidy and constitutional.
Reformism deceives and derails the movement by putting forward
the strategy of "peaceful transition to socialism." It pretends to reassure the
people by spreading pacifist and conciliatory ideas. It sells short the
sacrifices and strivings of the people —disarms them of their correct
understanding of the intractable nature of the enemy and disarms them of
their own power and will to fight and win. Reformism assumes the essential
goodness of US society, in conflict with the revolutionary view that the
13
system is rotten to the core and must be overthrown.
Reformism rejects revolutionary violence by treating each new
armed act as if it. were a Reichstag fire, an act of provocation, or premature.
Along with denouncing armed struggle comes the exaggerated emphasis on
legality and electoral struggle, or an attempt |.o influence power by
collaboration with the "best" aspects of the imperialists. Thus many good
struggles which are parallel to and complementary to militant and armed
struggle are instead turned against it, and posed as an alternative.
Another characteristic of reformism is "mainstreamisra" —the
attempt within the left to take on the coloration of the worst aspects of the
mainstream of US society and history so as to be acceptable, and thereby
change things without disturbing people toomueh.This is an attempt to slide in
under the flag. In the name of becoming integrated with the US people, this
movement abdicates its responsibility to confront racism and class rule and
change it. It becomes corrupt.
SETBACKS INFLICTED RV THE STATE
We are lighting u treacherous and nilhless enemy. The state has
implemented a plan to contain and erush the power of revolution. In the last
period they have inflicted some serious blows which have set back the
struggle.
Coimterinsurgency. A major organized attack has been mounted
against Black people and the Black community by Nixon forces, hike US
military interventions against Third YvorhJ peoples, this campaign of
genocide is a measure of the powerful threat to empire posed by Black
people. It has included waves of assassinations of Black leaders, imprisoning
large sectors of the young militant population, often for life, infiltration and
generalized terror. Heroin and methadone traffic have been massively
Greeted against Black urban communities. Part of a generation of Black
youth has been lost to drugs. It was irresponsible of us in 1970 to emphasize
only the social role of consciousness-expanding drugs without making a
frontal assault on the genoeidal use of heroin the main tiirust of our position
on drugs.
The government has come down hard on the entire Black
community: massive unemployment, sellouts which cultivate illiteracy
among Black children, cutbacks in funds for the cities which hasten the
collapse of communities through terrible housing and welfare starvation.
It is impossible to estimate the human cost of the government's
strategy —the lives of people like Jonathan and George Jackson,
Repression. The nature of Nixon's extralegal attack on the
movement was spelled out in the j, Edgar Hoover memo of May 1M68 and
elaborated by Mitchell and the Justice Department and White House
CIA-types. It is a strategy of infiltration, disruption and selected blows
against anti-war and revolutionary movements and leaders. It did temporarily
succeed in creating a climate of distrust and suspicion on the left. Its tactics
included threats and intimidation, espionage, grand juries and long trials
—and selected murders. The strategy against the Black movement and the
strategy against the anti-war left are different faces of the same apparatus.
Their basic repressive strategy is to divide, separate out, and make vulnerable
—to divide Third World and white, those in prison from those outside, those
in solitary from I hose in population, leaders from the grass roots and the
guerrillas from the mass? movement.
Organizing a Base fur Fascism. In the US this means racism:
building cxplicHy or thinly -disguised anti-Black and Third World campaigns.
To the extent that thev have gone unchallenged by organized revolutionary
forces they have 'been serious defeats.
The anti-busing movement is a Nixon-special, a tragedy for children
and anti-racist people. The entire elaborate campaign against busing is
promoted to disguise the fact t.!iat segregation of schools today is more
intense and extensive than in 1954 when the Supreme Court ordered it
ended. Anti-busing will roll back integration where it has happened and
entrench a segregated school system firmly in the control of racist white
Boards of Education. The campaign is violently anti-Black, under cover of
anti-busing, hi Bos-ton 20,000 whites marched against the busing of children;
in Pontiac, Michigan, Ozone Park and Canarsie, New York, white parents
attacked school buses and ixuiral oil on Black children.
Nixon's anti-busing campaign goes hand in hand with drastic cuts of
funds for education. Education for Third World children in segregated
schools is colonial-style —Black, Chieano, and Puerto Rican youth North and
South are abused, overcrowded, ignored if quiet and drugged if not, lost in
detention centers and beaten. Anti-busing has a political meaning which is
not at all about whether busing is the best way j.o achieve decent education
for most children. The real question is: Who will control the schools ? The
design of the state is control of the child's education, whether in the
integrated or segregated school. Segregate where you can; track the kids
where you must integrate. While racist control of the schools attempts to
prevent the Black child from succeeding in that dangerous and subversive
endeavor: learning to read.
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fel HwnoU, Ckiir^^ms^^ri^^^ C\\\a^}W.
A similar assault has been mounted against the people on welfare,
women, children and old people. Rockefeller and Reagan have led special
drives to institute photo indentity cards, compulsory work programs, and
impossible requirements to drive people off welfare by every means.
Nixon has twice hased his election propaganda on the rallying cry
of law-and-order. This has led to a national reorganization of police forces,
greater police use of advanced counterinsurgency technology developed for
Vietnam, and greater centralization of police forces thru computers, training
and coordinating groups like LEA A.
Anti-crime legislation mobilizes racist fears in the white population.
It has been successful enough to undo many gains of the previous two
decades: to initiate preventive detention, undermine the jury system and put
into effect new mandatory death penalties. Two models are the special
police crackdown unit used in Detroit, called STRESS, which was
responsible for the murder of many Black people; and the new Rockefeller
drug law, which forces legal addiction by giving people a "choice" between
long prison sentences and lifetime parole, or mandatory methadone
maintenance.
If we do not create an anti-racist left, the masses of white people
being bombarded with these measures have little alternative but to resolve
these fears and these conflicts the traditional way —in complicity with
racism.
CONTINUING CRISIS AT HOME
Conditions will not wait for us. With the decline of imperialism the
ability to expand and export basic contradictions becomes less available to
the US rulers and this means continual crisis and hardship for people here.
We are looking at two of these crises to analyze their origins and their
consequences for the imperialists and for the people.
GOVERNMENTAL CRISIS
In the wake of the US defeat in Vietnam comes an unprecendented
governmental crisis. Watergate is a magnificent victory of the struggles of the
60's, a reflection of the war coming home. Crisis chases crisis as state leaders
search for a consolidating strategy. The turmoil is indicative of serious and
fatal weaknesses in the system. It offers an unparalleled opportunity for
revolutionary and popular movements.
Nixon has been caught with the chicken in his hand. His known
crimes include sabotage of elections, cover-up of the sabotage, land deals,
income tax evasions, tampering with the evidence, giant swindles and fixes
—not to mention his secret wars abroad and at home, campaigns of
race-hatred, the air war against Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and violation
of the Ceasefire Agreement.
Nixon's re-election was a low point. But the unanimity of his
election was momentary and hollow; it began crumbling immediately. The
terror bombing of Hanoi was carried out just before the Paris Peace
16
Agreement which acknowledged LS defeat and marked ;i ina|or uclur\ tor
the Vietnamese people along t lie road lo independence and liberalitm: Ihe
assassination of Amilear Cabral, \friean liberation leader and lie, id <ji' the
PAJCC was carried out by mercenaries of I H-anncd Portugal on [lie eve of
the declaration of the. independence of Guinc-Bi^aii. \i\on: [iolh deadb
powerful and seriously weakened. Eighteen mon[h> later lie ha> become the
symbol of de- legitimized bourgeois ideology, a two-ltit criminal, host to a
den of monopolies and crew-cut thieves.
Mison has always been a political leader or' counter-revolution and
tighter control of the colonies —an executioner of the Rosenbergs. Ihe men
at Attica, the students at Jackson and Kent. His national military alert
during the J 973 October War in the Mideast shows the fantastic lengths to
which he will carry the world to the brink of war. His Christmas bombing of
Hanoi was the horrible proof that his policies are based on terror against the
people. His fundamental program is militarization —that is, enormous
technological and military spending for war and arms abroad and police
control at. home.
Watergate is a domestic reflection of the empire in crisis. Lor
Xixon/Kissinger, political unity in the LS around a program of law-aud-order
for the world was essential in the wake of successful revolution abroad.
There are historical precedents for imperialist repression following a
revolutionary success:
From the >". Y. I'osl, Wednesday, June 6. 1 973:
Radicals were the target. The Attorney General and his
agents, armed with 60,000 dossiers compiled under J. Edgar
Hoover, struck quickly. In 33 cities across the nation,
government men seized more than 4,000 persons, sometimes
without the authority of a court warrant, in homes, cafes,
club rooms and taverns.
It was January 1920, and many Americans feared
for national security in the wake of the successful
Communist revolution in Russia, the spectre of spreading
Bolshevism, scattered bombings in the IIS and troubling labor
strikes.
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer rode a wave of
popular support with his massive federal arrests of Russian
immigrants, local Communists and other suspected radicals.
In order to make his foreign policy of military terror and detente
effective, and in order to crush rebellion and anger at home, Nixon created
an extralegal force (the plumbers), a counlerinsurgeney program and
sabotage operation. He justified these moves on the basis of national security
and domestic subversion -both cornerstones of Nixon power for over 2r>
years. His moves to reassert control spilled over against substantial elements
of the ruling class and the struggle for bourgeois political power was on.
Nixon's links with, the giant corporations have been put on the line. This is
the rule in this stage of monopoly capital: the identity of business and
government. Mir! for now, Mxon's the one, caught in cahoots, on the
defensive.
Every aspect of the prosecution of the Watergate crisis itself
remains it: the hands of the ruling class. The Watergate investigations observe
gentlemanly limits: they have never explored Nixon's deliberate aggression
against Black. Chieano, and Puerto Rican communities; they cover for every
mention of C].\ operations at home. Power in the US is a white gentleman's
eltib.
Yet (he crisis run? away. It has become the political expression of a
proeess thai began in the 60's -the defeat of the myth of American freedom
and democracy. Vietnam is the crime that plagues Nixon, defines his fal). He
is a war eriminah The consequence of Watergate is a population wary of the
hypocritical words of leading politicians, wise to the bankruptcy of existing
society.
THE HEAL AND PHONY ENERGY GRISTS
The real energy crisis is the crisis of imperialism. It is seen in a fight
over raw materials and resources, ft reflects the crisis in empire: declining
Western control over the economies of the Third World, increased
competition between capitalist countries, and growing stagnation arising
from contradictions within monopoly capitalism itself. The system is in
trouble.
In order to maintain growth and economic dominance. [.';&
corporations and government have followed policies which would maximize
oil company profits overseas; US-based oil companies provided 60 percent of
Europe's oil and 80 percent of Japan's oil, primarily from wells in the
Mideast. That arrangement depended on continued domination by the IS
within the capitalist sphere and over the oil-exporting nations. US
imperialism lost world hegemony in Vietnam. This loss made it impossible
for the US to keep dollars afloat on its own terms, leading to such things as
dollar devaluations and the OPEC embargo. The US oil companies can no
longer dictate the terms under which oil and natural gas will be distributed
and soid throughout the non-socialist world.
From these conditions, the ruling class devised the phony energy
crisis as a strategy to recapture as much control and domination as possible.
They deliberately limited refining capacity, and created artificial shortages
prior to the embargo. The largest oil companies used the suffering of the
people to rake in windfall profits. Through the inevitable crises of capitalism,
the giant monopolies grow stronger and seize greater control of the
economy, political life and the means of destruction. But even as the crisis is
engineered, it gets out of hand and creates new contradictions.
The phony energy crisis was cooked up by the giant monopolies,
the "masters of the oil world" who control the reserves. Tn addition to
unprecedented price rises, they got a blank check to exploit and develop
highly profitable energy sources: the Alaska pipeline, shale oil in the
Rockies, off-shore drilling rights, strip mining, and dangerous, leaky nuclear
power plants with lethal byproducts. The oil monopolies have emerged as
energy monopolies -with. major interests in coal, natural gas, shale and
nuclear power. Finally, the big companies have increased their contention
with other capitalist rivals in other countries and their power to eliminate
smaller US oil companies.
18
It is the people who are paying for the.se bonanza profits and are
being forced to bear the brunt of the crisis. Although the shortages were
created in corporate board rooms, the crisis has become grimly real. The
people are directly affected in numerous and serious ways. The lower the
income, the greater (he impact of energy costs, food prices, inflation and
unemployment. There's always been an energy crisis for Black people —no
heating oil in winter, no transportation to go to work. Children became sick
and died from diseases caused by cold apartments; last winter a 93-year-old
couple froze to death for lack of heat; millions have been laid off jobs and
suffered hardship from lacking the basic necessities of life.
People know that it is a political crisis —not: a natural catastrophe,
not a shortage of fuel, not a technical failure. The socialist nations are not in
an energy crisis —this is a capitalist crisis of profit and power.
At the same time as the US people are urged to turn down their
thermostats, the US 6th and 7lh naval fleets alone consume one third of the
Arab oil used by the US. Military consumption of energy is astronomical; the
energy consumed in the production of atomic bombs and materials for the
stockpile, in war reserves of jet fuel, or in the flying time of B-32's should be
the first to go. Nixon's policy of Vietnamization depends on substituting
energy (fuel for the air war, the technological battlefield and the Saigon
military) for US soldiers. Over 20,000 barrels of oil per day for military use
are supplied to Thieu by the US.
With u percent of the world's population, the l_:S consumes over
one third of the world's energy resources. The corporate myth of limitless
consumption is based on control of Third World resources. The ruling class
encourages wasteful and reckless dependence on petrochemical products:
high horse-power and excessively heavy cars, plastics and synthetics and
nitrogen fertilizers. The failure to develop good sources of energy (such as
fusion or solar energy) is not based on priorities for a better life, but on
profit.
There are many consequences from the energy crisis:
—The ruling class has tried to use it to lay the basis for war in the
Mideast. It is a measure of the strength of the 60's and of the Third World
nations that warmongering in the Mideast is not an easy out for them.
—The oil crisis bodes more of the same for other resources. US
corporations are self-sufficient in only ten of the 36 basic industrial raw
materials. They are a parasite on the Third World. They will face continuing
crises over who is to control and who is to profit. Common fronts among the
raw material producing countries of the Third World are a great step forward
and a significant challenge to unchecked US domination and plunder. The
power in the unity of the small. The recent U.N. special session on raw
materials drew a sharp picture of the plunder of the poor countries by
imperialism, and the terms of future struggle. Countries rich in bauxite,
copper, iron ore and other resources are beginning to unite for the
protection of their natural wealth. The people of the Third World are striving
to control their own economies and to make full use of their resources. This
is an upset of US plans for a new stable order.
—The ecological devastation wrought by the energy companies is
unparalleled, In Puerto Rico, Indonesia, Angola and Brazil, multinational
corporations seek new sources of energy at the expense of the sane
19
de\elopincn[ oi I In- natural resources or the wishes of the people. The
plunder for sources of power is emerging as a major threat to the survival of
rural areas of Ibis country and to ihe continued culture ant! community of
people who live there. The major oil companies are pushing thru contracts to
strip mine real on the Cheyenne, and Crow reservations in Montana on a
scale that would forcibh "urbanize and transform the .Native American
population and denude the landscape. Only a tiny proportion of the 1.8
million acres of land damaged by stripping in the West and Appalachia have
been reclaimed to any extent at all. The rape\)f Hopi and Navajo lands to
create giant power plants in Four Corners, New Mexico, is creating pollution
greater than in Los Angeles. The AEC has pushed thru a massive program to
build 500 to 700 new nuclear power plants in partnership with corporations
like Westinghouse and Rockwell, These breeder reactors are expensive,
dangerous, and deadly to adjoining waters and communities. They now
threaten every major New England river, the Great Lakes and the oceans
themselves.
— Industr) passed on its problems by increasing unemployment,
laying off thousands, and driving up the prices of everything. Women and
Black workers, last hired and first fired, suffer the most immediately.
These disruptions to an already stagnating economy have resulted
in a serious attack on the basic necessities for masses of people. For the lives
of Third World people, families headed by women, and the people who are-
dirt poor, it is violent aggression. Inflation is deadly for old people, for
families on welfare and for I he great number of underemployed. But the
crisis cannot be contained among the dispossesed -it attacks the common
family, the working person,
, —A severe food crisis reflected in the rise of food prices and massive
food shortages is emerging. In the wealthiest country in the world, there is a
cost of living and it is beyond the reach of millions of people. Inflation and
the impact of the energy crisis will be used to drive up this cost to live,
especially food prices. There has always been starvation and malnutrition for
many in the US -the human consequences of food for profit. As food prices
climb and real incomes decline, broad sectors of the population are beset by
mounting debt, loss of savings, fear for jobs.
Food production, distribution, and agricultural land have become
concentrated in monopolies ((jailer! agribusiness) since World War II, with
reliance on fertilizers, pesticides, new methods of drying and storage and
mechanization that consume enormous amounts of energy. Agribusiness
rests on the super-exploitation of farm workers and share-croppers on the
one hand, and giant programs of government subsidies (welfare for the rich)
to keep vast stretches of fertile land deliberately unproductive. This is to
keep prices up in the US. H amounts to government-enforced shortage,
malnutrition for millions of people in the US, hunger and starvation for the
world's people.
Of all the consequences of the US use of world resources for profit,
the most serious is beginning to come to the fore: a major crisis in the world
food supply. What is experienced here as shortages and high prices is
translated in the Third World as real famine and paralysis of industrial
development. The US with its mechanized agribusiness lias a monopoly on
food exporting, and it controls a vast sector of the food-producing land in
the world. A rise in food prices devastates Third World countries. They must
'">(!
depend on the US for food. Agricultural la mi throughout, the Third World is
turned info a plantation system of "cash crop*;"1 by imperialism (tobacco,
rubber, coffee, cotton). Two thirds of all the arable, land in Latin America is
planted with non-nutritious eash crops — weallh for the colonizers, not food
for the people. South Vietnam, once the rice howl of Southeast Asia, is now
forced to import "miracle" rice from the US. Imperialism's irrational use of
agricultural resources to produce vast quantities of meat to feed some of the
US population means that the amount of protein wasted by US agriculture is
comparable to the protein deficiency of the rest of the world.
Starvation, hunger and food shortages will unleash and sharpen ail
the. basic contradictions. The imperialists will respond with solutions like
population control, war, and greater monopoly power. Hut hunger is too
stark and the conflict irreconcilable. This contradiction could well define the
coming period.
Without mass struggle there can be no revolution.
Without armed struggle there can be no victory.
Denunciations of the struggles of the sixties as a failure do
the enemy's work. These surrenders are a live burial of our
people's great moments, and weaken the future by poisoning
the lessons of the past.
As a people we arc saturated with the myth of American
superiority. As a revolutionary people, we must take our
place in the human community resolutely opposed to all
expressions of arrogance.
Starvation, hunger and food shortages will unleash and
sharpen all the basic contradictions.
To say that US imperialism is on the defensive does not mean
it is toothless nor that its overthrow will come fast or simply.
In its decline imperialism is exiremely cruel and it will use
every weapon it has to deceive, divide, starve, torture and
murdei those who attack it. But its eventual ovenhrow is
inevitable.
21
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'isjtjjr;,)"1 'jftia^™ [j'iia- ^f"^ 6! Iti-^ur-iid Cliffwi ^isi'tr - Ssut^janraiui Qaeii}S l'A^,
WHAT WE THINK
Th<a world balance of forces between revolution n.nd
r.(>(i!iicr-re.vo!ti.tiori has changed in favor of revolution.
Truong (.liiiib
January 1.972
Our method is dialectical materialism. To plan our i-ta'aicgv. we
make .ui analysis of t.ho conflicting forces, flic underlying contradictions o!
our lime, aiaMmw ihe\ are developing.
'Th i-i paper is optimisMc. Thai, is because we are conscious thai the
must, align ssive and preda!.or\ imperialism that ever exisie;; has bee si
dej'ci sled h\ the \ ieinamese people. This unique atu.l ama/aug period ot
histoid is (tie era of !. S Imperial crisis and decline, Tcajav owt a [dllion
people organize their lives around socialism; today thousands ot gneiTdkb-
and milium- ui' people in nvcr sixi\ countries are engaged in active struggle
agaiuM I > imperialism. Independence movements, wars oj' national
liberation, ami r."\ ;dulionarv ino\ernenfs wilhin the I'."- are engaged in 'he
deej-uve weakening of ihe i nspire. ll is now being turned [jack b\ I he people
il lias robbed and plundered.
L;* imp; ;iaiism ha.-? had its setbacks, stalemates and defeats before,
but never urn-' -o deca-ive as in Vietnam, The Vietnamese met and finned
[jack ihc ['iih t'.jiTe of IS technological and mihtaiv might, and ended the era
of vmrid liCij/'itHMi-.. I'or [iie IS. Vietnam is a waters he d in the decline of
imperial! -m —si is ;he defining event of our time.
I mperiab.-m has dug its claws deepest into (he oppressed and
euloni/aa! na! :i :■'!-.. and it is these nations who are now (lie organized , leading
spearnonit m ine enmmon .struggle against imperialism. The imposition ui'
torei-j; ruie and ion'ign exploitation has created the conditions which ge^e
iurih io movement.- for national liberation —the seeds of Imperialism's
( 1 1 • :■■ i c i h lion. These movements have grown and nudfiphed. Crcal
'10
revolutionary holders have emerged from I he Third World, forged in people's
wur and in the building of socialism. ISecauso the US in so dependent on its
colonics (the super-exploitation of the Third World), national liberation both
here and abroad is a knife to the strategic underbelly of the monster.
To say that IS imperialism is on the defensive does not mean it is
toothless nor that its overthrow will come fast or simply. In its decline
imperialism is extremely cruel and it will use every weapon it has to deceive,
divide, starve,, torture and murder those who attack it. But its eventual
overthrow is inevitable.
As colonized nations liberate themselves, imperialism's ability to
maintain a stable economy and ideological hegemony over its own people
crumbles. The decline of imperialism produces continuing crises inside the
[JS: Watergate, energy crisis, unemployment. The traditional outlets for
domestic crisis and conflict —(he export of contradictions, racism, war —
have become less workable. It is certain that another crisis will follow the
last, that unpredictable crises will color the future. Each separate crisis is
temporary and able to be rationalized in the short run: but the overall crisis
and decline of imperialism is permanent and ongoing.
The crises related to imperial decline create great possibilities for a
leap iti revolutionary consciousness.
Throughout its history, (he rulers of the US have maintained their
power by creating privileged sectors among the people and letting us fight
over the privileges, in this, their main weapon is white supremacy. N'ow great
fissures have appeared. The wealth of the world is no longer completely at
the disposal of the US. Imperialism is faced with the necessity to militarize
and increase; its control over IS society, especially the dissident and
rebellious sectors.
The empire feeds on war. War is necessary for expansion and
colonial control, but unsuccessful and unjust war loosens the imperialist's
hold over the home base. As peoples reclaim their lands and their resources,
imperialism is forced to extract more wealth from everywhere it can -where
it still can reach in the Third World, from its capitalist allies and competitors,
and from the US people.
This is the increasing trend of the 70's: the trend of crisis and
depression. Our job is to tap the discontent seething in many sectors of the
population, to find allies everywhere people are hungry or angry, to mobilize
poor and working people against imperialism. In this process {lie people will
continue (o ge tic rate new culture and new forms for the struggle to fit our
particular conditions and time. There are beautiful developments, like the
rising of women against the oppression of male supremacy, and the struggle
of young people against alienation and oppression, which are full of
revolutionary possibilities. We are not alone. The struggles for national
liberation are the lifeblood of our own; their battles are the front line against
our common enemy.
We have an urgent responsibility: to destroy imperialism from
within in order to help free the world and ourselves from its grasp. Without
underestimating the difficulties, this is our position of strength. We use all
the weapons available to us. This necessarily includes mass militant action
and guerrilla action to lay the foundation for the decisive armed struggle.
This paper is a strategy for revolutionary anti-imperialism.
A nti -imperial ism defines our struggle and direction, helps us correctly
23
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identify our enemy and our friends, and is the necessary basis Tor advancing
our movement. The strategic weak point of empire today is its hold of its
external and internal colonies, and it is there that imperialism receives the
heaviest blows.
Our final goal is the destruction of imperialism, the seizure of
power, and the creation of socialism. Our strategy for this stage of the
struggle is to organize the oppressed people of the imperial nation itself to
join wilh the colonies hi the attack on imperialism. This process of attacking
and weakening imperialism involves the defeat of all kinds of national
chauvinism and arrogance; this is a precondition to our fight for socialism.
The Vietnamese struggle provides a strategic mode]: as the
anti-colonial liberation movement advanced, contradictions within the LIS
heightened, creating more favorable conditions for revolutionary organizing
and action —we organized our people and our movement advanced; as
anti-imperialist movement gathered strength and moved forward, this aided
the Vietnamese who dealt a decisive blow to US imperialism.
Revolution is a dialectical process of destruction and creation. In
the US, revolution is intimately bound to the process of defeating
imperialism around the world. Any conception of socialism defined in
national terms, within so extreme and predatory an oppressor nation as the
US, is a view that leads in practice to a fight for particular privileged interest
and is a very dangerous ideology. Active combat against empire is the only
foundation for socialist revolution in the oppressor nation.
Socialism is the total opposite of capitalism/imperialism. It is the
rejection of empire and white supremacy. Socialism is the violent overthrow
of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
and the eradication of the social system based on profit. Socialism means
control of the productive forces for the good of the whole community
instead of the few who live on hilltops and in mansions, Socialism means
priorities based on human need instead of corporate greed. Socialism creates
the conditions for a decent and creative quality of life for all.
After a long struggle, power will be in the hands of the people.
Society will have to he reorganized, toward the integration of each with the
whole, where people can realize themselves in peace and freedom. There will
be rebuilding to do, but the tremendous power of creative human energy
—revealed now in flashes of liberated space and in struggle— will be freed to
fulfill its potential. Freed from the constrictions, prejudices and fearful
anxieties of imperialist society, people can be better. Our values are
collective and communal. Birth and death will be celebrated wilh dignity;
old people will have respect, children will have rights. Willi (lie elimination
of waste from our society, all the people can eat healthy food. The cities can
be real human gardens. We will have to rebuild them, reclaim llic rivers and
forests, and the dying species. Wielded in the interest of everyone,
technology can serve us; no labor need be unproductive. Our art, music,
poetry, theater will interpret and awaken the relationship of onrscbes lo tin-
world forces, acting on each other. Our culture will be insurgent, celebrate
people's victories and record the history of the struggle. We will support
those who are still fighting and continue fighting ourselves. We will awaken
our sense of being part of a world community. ARM THE SPIRIT
24
25
V)o c\)| ffji^
26
II. VIETNAM
The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois
civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its
home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies,
where it goes naked.
Karl IVfarx
August 8, 1853
NewYork Daily Tribune
Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom,
H o Chi Mnh
Many friends see only the difficulties that lie ahead and do
not see the great victory we have won. The ftris Agreement
not only speaks to the failure of aggression of the United
States in Vietnam, it marks the failure of the global strategy
of the United States to stop liberation struggles of people in
many places.
Nguyen Thi Binh
January 29, 1973
27
MEANING OF THE CEASEFIRE
It is now more than a year since the signing of the Agreement on
Ending War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. For the people in the North
and in the liberated areas under the Provisional Revolutionary Government
of South Vietnam, the great effort of reconstruction —to "heal the wounds
of war"-- has begun. However, since the time of the Agreement, more than
73,000 South Vietnamese people have died in combat. 200,000 remain in
Thieu's prisons. There are no illusions that final peace has come. The people
in the liberated zones defend themselves daily against bombings and attacks,
carried out by Thieu's US-trained and equipped army.
In the liberated areas of the South, new administrations are being
set up to build schools and clinics, to comb the soil for unexploded
anti-personnel weapons, readying it for replanting. Near Dong Ha in Quang
Tri Province, the people have already harvested their first crop of rice in over
five years.
Slowly, the millions of craters are being filled, though it will take
many generations to move enough soil to fill them all. The towns are being
rebuilt, since each town of any size was bombed into dust whenever it was
liberated, "One puts up with what is available" they say, and out of the
rubble and ruins come adequate structures. In the liberated territories people
are poor, but medical care is free to everyone, people are learning to read
and no one starves. The new life represents the independence and democracy
for which the people of South Vietnam have fought so hard.
Nixon and Thieu have both failed to observe the terms of the
Agreement they signed. US military advisors, disguised as civilians, continue
to advise and organize Thieu's police and army. The US has violated the
Agreement by sending in new weapons, like F5-E jets. The Nixon
administration is asking Congress to approve $2.4 billion in military and
economic aid to South Vietnam. This is an increase of about 65% over what
was approved for this year. When the money for Cambodia and Laos is
included, the total Nixon request is $3.5 bi31ion. The administration justifies
this increase because of inflation, and now Kissinger is arguing that the US is
"obligated" by the Cease-Fire Agreement to give aid to Thieu.
South Vietnam is a police state, 90% funded by US tax dollars. This
aid makes possible the continued rule of the dictator Thieu. The attacks he
has ordered launched against the liberated zones are major obstacles to peace
and make possible the re-escalation of the war at any time.
There is still necessary Vietnam work to be done by the US
an ti -imperialist movement. A strong movement is the greatest support we
could give. It would put pressure on Nixon and the government, and it
would continue to build our own struggle here. As time passes, and
reconstruction proceeds, the strength of the liberated areas will grow and the
power of Thieu will be weakened. We can help. We must demand that the
Nixon government abide by the Agreement and stop aid to Thieu; and we
must remain vigilant against the possibility of US re-escalation.
The Vietnamese struggle is the most significant political event of
our generation. Understanding the history of the Vietnam war is a key to
28
understand the present world situation, the present US governmental crisis,
the present possibilities for the revolutionary movement here, and a correct
anti-imperialist perspective. This is the era of national liberation, and for
most of the past fifteen years, Vietnam has been the leading force in this
struggle.
The Vietnam War, alongside the struggle of Black people, sparked
the youth revolt of the 60's and created the conditions for the New Left to
mature. The relentless barbarity and length of the US aggression became a
crucible within which our generation learned about US society. We were
forced to see the horror of empire and the real nature of the monster we live
in: we "discovered" imperialism.
Many conflicting forces were at work within the youth movement;
progressive characteristics were in conflict with reactionary aspects, and class
struggle took place within the culture. The growing independence of young
people was a multi-hillion dollar market to be exploited with waste
commodities. But during the years of resistance —from the Pentagon and
Stop the Draft Week, to Kent State and massive protests against the
Cambodia invasion —the strength of the growing anti-imperialist forces and
consciousness were the "best self" of the youth revolt. We did, at long last,
get into the fight against the dirtiest of all wars. Slowly, in hesitation and
confusion, we responded to the heroism, humanity and revolutionary
principle of an Asian people, led by a saintly and very tough revolutionary.
Ho Chi Minh.
29
The draft was an immediate force that pushed us to become an
anti-imperialist movement, It was an attack on poor, Black and Third World
and working-class youth. Seven million young men served in the armed
forces during the Vietnam War. Few families were, spared some direct
confrontation with the war machine. At the same time, millions of us took
to the streets to protest the 1970 invasion of Cambodia. The seriousness of
our threat was growing. The killings of students at Jackson State and Kent
State had a significant effect on the youth movement. The war was brought
home and Nixon was determined to have law-and-order until the US could
pull off its "peace with honor" eharade and get US troops out of South
Vietnam.
What was happening here was only part of a larger process taking
place around the wrorld. It took the Vietnamese many years to force the US
troop withdrawal. It was fouryears between the Tet Offensive —which broke
the back of the invading army, forced Johnson to step down and the US to
negotiate —and the 1972 Final Offensive. During that time, the anli-war
movement reached its greatest strength and the largest and most militant
demonstrations took place. Inspired by the Black Panthers and other Black
fighters, many whites such as Sam Melville, Cameron Bishop, the New Year's
Gang in Madison, and ourselves began building armed struggle. Our
movement was undergoing profound changes as the Vietnamese people were
leading the struggle against US imperialism.
INTERNATIONAL VICTORY
The Vietnamese built international solidarity around their struggle.
They organized a broad united front against imperialism throughout the
world. This international front —of which the movement in the United
States is an important part- consisted of many Third World nations, the
socialist countries and opposition movements within the imperialist
countries. Mass anti-war movements grew, not only in the US. but in Japan.
France. Great Britain, West Germany, Italy and Sweden.
In an era of intense contradictions among the socialist countries,
Vietnam fought for a strategic focus on US imperialism as the major enemy
of the world's people -and united all socialist countries in support of its
struggle.
The success of the Vietnamese struggle helped call into being the
unity of the non-aligned nations. Historic conferences in Guyana (1 972) and
Algeria (1973), recognized the PRG and the Cambodian government in exile
of Norodom Shianouk, and sparked the growth of the progressive alliance
that is becoming an increasingly important force in the world.
By tying down the US military forces throughout the 60's, the
Vietnamese opened up the space for other Third World nations to resist
imperialism. With the bulk of US armed forces in Vietnam, including 70
percent of the air force at the height of the air war, the US was not in a
position to send the Marines to Chile nor to intervene for Portugal in
Guinc-Bissau. Cuba was able to survive, and in turn help Vietnam, This was
Che's understanding of "Two, Three, Many Vietnams:" a strategy to
overextend and defeat US imperialism.
30
The Vietnamese say: "If the resistance is strong, even a Hawk
may be forced to withdraw. If the resistance is weak, even a
Dove may be tempted to invade."
By forcing the US to use its entire array of weapons, Vietnam
stripped all pretense from US neocolonialism Anti-US demonstrations took
place in the Phillipines, Mexico, Lebanon, Iran and Argentina. This showed
an inherent instability in the US empire. Neocolonial governments faced
pressure from their own people to oppose~the Vietnam War or face rebellion
at home.
The US attempt to win the war exacerbated the US balance of
payments and produced a monetary crisis. Skyrocketing inflation and
unemployment at the same time —supposedly an impossibility under
"modern capitalism"— cut into the living standards of Third World people,
working people, and the poor throughout the US.
The deteriorating economic situation of the US has meant that its
domination over rival advanced capitalist countries is under greater attack
and is no longer as secure. The growing strength of Japan and the EEC pose
new conflicts for US imperialism.
There is no doubt that the present political isolation of US
imperialism —evidenced in the recent UN decision to declare Puerto Rico a
colony, the Arab and African stand against US-backed Israeli-zionism, the
world condemnation of the US and NATO support for Portugal's African
wars, the admission of the People's Republic of China to the UN, recognition
of Cuba by a number of Latin American countries— can^be traced to US
defeat in Vietnam.
NATIONAL VICTORY
The victory won by the Vietnamese against US imperialism is
plainly reflected in the Cease-Fire Agreement:
The United States and all other countries respect the
independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of
Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements on
Vietnam.
and
The United States will not continue its military involvement
or intervene in the internal affairs of South Vietnam.
The Agreement further states that the United States will dismantle
its military bases in South Vietnam, will withdraw all military forces
including advisers, and will not introduce new military personnel,
armaments, munitions and war material into South Vietnam.
This is a statement of the goals of the National Liberation Front
since its founding in I960 —goals that the US government was forced to
accept and sign after thirteen years of aggression.
31
The period of total war and attempted genocide has been defeated,
and the US now has been forced into a public recognition of the NLF
program. The Vietnamese victory came at a phenomenal cost to the
Vietnamese people and their homeland: their suffering was incalculable. Yet
their victory is of enormous consequence. The Vietnamese people, through
massive mobilization and the successful carrying out of a people's war of
liberation, drove out the US invading force, and thereby checked the
advance of US imperialism.
The Vietnam War shows that an organized, united Third World
nation can hold off and eventually defeat the full force of US imperialism.
This is a major blow to the US attempt to convince, peoples, including those
within its own boundaries, that it is "invincible."
The Vietnamese strategy was based on the mobilization of their
own people. They raised people's war to a new level of heroism and
humanity, applying the strategy to Vietnamese conditions. The Vietnamese
say: "If the resistance is strong, even a Hawk may be forced to withdraw. If
the resistance is weak, even a Dove may be tempted to invade," The
Vietnamese liberation forces were able to defeat each successive US strategy.
The Tel Offensive of 1968 showed that 500,000 US troops would not be
enough to maintain the US in Vietnam,
Mixon created the policy of "Vietnarnization" —changing the color
of the corpses. It was a failure militarily, defeated in the invasions of
Cambodia and Laos, and in the 1972 Final Offensive, It was these defeats,
capped by the failure of Nixon ''s late December bombings of Hanoi and
Haiphong, which forced him to withdraw US forces just as the French were
obliged to withdraw after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu, The Vietnamese
refer to the destruction of 1/5 of the entire US B-52 fleet over Hanoi and
Haiphong during the bombings as the Dien Bien Phu of the skies.
Chapter 1 , Article ].. of trie Cease-Fire Agreement states simply and
clearly that the US accepts the definition of Vietnam "recognized by the
1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam," This says that Vietnam is one
country, temporarily divided.
The full measure of US defeat can be judged when one considers
that in 1954 the US I) refused to accept the Geneva Agreements; 2)
immediately set out to subvert them by installing a neocolonial puppet
regime in Saigon; and 3) fought the longest war in US history to maintain
two Vietnams,
"ALL FOR VIETNAM"
The vanguard nature of Vietnamese liberation in the past decade
means that we can approach the difficult question of class analysis,
consciousness and potential, by looking at how various groups within society
were affected by antiwar struggle. This way we avoid an idealist or
opportunist class analysis, and begin with our understanding, based on
practice, of the leading a nti- imperialist forces in society. Black and Third
World people, and young people —especially students and members of the
armed forces— responded to the Vietnam War in the most consistently
principled way. These are the forces within society who kept open the
32
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OC\\iYLlX
33
possibility of joint action between the oppressed in our counln and those in
the Third World. Because of its anti-imperialist perspective, the New Left,
became a cutting edge for the expression of working-class consciousness and
commitment. Support for the leading force in the fight against the common
enemy is the essential and necessary content of proletarian internationalism
here and now.
Many organizations pay lip-service to the anti-imperialist struggle.
But those movement organizations, who, in ■practice, did not come to give
full support to the Vietnamese struggle as the main priority of class struggle
made a serious error. This was especially true during the 1972 Final
Offensive, when —between the launching of the offensive on March 31,
1972, and the signing of the Cease-Fire Agreement on January 27, 1973
—the slogan of the movement should have been: "All for Vietnam!" By this
measure we criticize our own practice during the Final Offensive, when we
organized under this slogan, but were not successful in carrying out our full
program, especially at the time of the Christmas bombings of Hanoi and
Haiphong.
This does not mean that organizing among women, students or
workers should have been deferred so that we all could work on
mobilizations. It does mean that the period of the Final Offensive was a
unique time in history, when a specific struggle of momentous consequence
to the overall weakening of imperialism was in a decisive stage that required
full and uncompromising support.lt will be a great leap if wc can learn to
identify those crucial times when a particular anti-imperialist focus becomes
the central strategic task of our movement.
Today, many of the same errors continue to play themselves out in
various movement responses to the continuing imperialist aggression in SE
Asia.
A major error is to be blind to Vietnam's victory. This mistake does
not distinguish between victory and Final Victory. There are many victories
still to be won in Vietnam: the defeat of the puppet regime in the South,
reunification of the North and South, the consolidation of socialism
throughout all of Vietnam. But victory in revolution is not like the seventh
game of the world series. Victory is built for over time, thru a series of
successes and failures.
When a variety of quantitative changes achieve a point of
qualitative change, this can be considered a victory. The defeat of US ground
troops provides an example: for three years the Vietnamese fought the full
force of the US armed forces on the ground. In that time there were many
defeats and losses as well as many victories. By Tet, 1968, the successes had
become the direction of the war. The Tet offensive was extremely costly to
the Vietnamese liberation fighters; it was also the decisive point in the
victory over US ground forces. It was the point at which Vietnamese victory
became inevitable, and the remaining question became: "At what cost?"
The Vietnamese demand for this stage of the struggle was for US ground
troops to leave their soil, to allow the Vietnamese themselves to resolve the
conflict. This has been partially achieved and is the essence of the victory of
the Cease-Fire Agreement.
34
Another major error is to say that the anti-war movement was
powerless and failed lo affeet the outcome of the war. These are words we
hear from Nixon. They are destructive lies. Don't do the Stale's work.
With an enemy as powerful as US imperialism, every people's
victory is lo be treasured and claimed. To deny the major accomplishments
of our movement leaves the people weak and demoralized. In our statement
"Common Victories'" on the occasion of the signing of the Cease-Fire
Agreement we said:
We urge all opponents of the government's war policies to
allow themselves to seize and celebrate this triumph. We
welcome the renewal which comes from sharing the
aspirations of a heroic people. Distrust of the Nixon-rulers
must not blind us to the light of Vietnam. WitSioul savoring
our common victories, we become cynical and paralized.
Expecting everything, we discard anything less. Now the
Vietnamese can order their unification, plant and harvest,
heal and teach, in their own time.
The movement played a specific and important role. Without it, the
Johnson-Nixon governments would most likely have:
—launched a land invasion of North Vietnam
—waged tactical or full nuclear war
—started a war with China
—bombed the dikes of North Vietnam
These were all gcnocidal weapons in the ruling-class arsenal.
Without a growing anti-war movement, without drastic escalation in the
nature and militancy of our resistance, they might, have been used. The
political cost at home for each successive strategy became an important
point in deterring the use of these weapons.
A point of great resistance to the war was the May, 1070 youth
rebellions in response to the US invasion of Cambodia, The uprising forced
Nixon into an early withdrawal from Cambodia and resulted in legislation
prohibiting direct US intervention in Cambodia, Perhaps most importantly,
Nixon did not dare use massive US troops in the subsequent invasion of
Laos, This restriction aided the stunning victory of the Pat he t Lao —a
decisive defeat for Nixon's strategy of extending the war throughout
Indochina.
The anti-war movement can count other significant successes in a
decade of resistance. Never in the entire history of [he US did the rulers have
a harder time controlling the minds that pulled the triggers than in Vietnam.
Active duty enlisted people developed high consciousness about the nature
of imperialism. Military insubordination, desertion, sabotage, and fragging
weakened (he imperial army and made it unreliable. As s result, US ground
forces can no longer be counted upon as a dependable weapon of
eounterinsurgeney. It is very difficult to imagine sending an army that has so
many Blacks and Third World soldiers to put down wars of liberation in
Africa or to side with Israeli zionisrn in the Mideast.
Military conscription has been abolished. The volunteer army is a
somewhat futile attempt to rebuild a strong military by eliminating the
35
oJe.*-rtl!q leader
unwilling draftee.
A third major error is to say that the struggle of an underdeveloped
country like Vietnam is so fundamentally different, from our own that there
are no lessons to be learned. The Vietnamese people have taught us a lot if
we arc able to open ourselves and learn:
—They have shown in practice how )<j build a revolutionary culture
based on internationalism and total commitment to (be struggle. In the days
immediately following the coup in Chile, ihe police occupied a large factory.
About 20 workers died in combat and a young Vietnamese who had been
there since June !973, learning (he technology of food production, climbed
on the roof, filled his pockets with dynamite sticks and jumped on top of a
police bus as it was coming into the courtyard. He was killed along with 40
policemen. The Vietnamese have shown in practice how to respond to
set-hacks and defeat by mobilizing and eonlintiing to build forward motion.
Victory lies in collective unity, courage and sacrifice.
•■■The leading role of women in the Vietnamese struggle has been a
lesson and an inspiration to oppressed people everywhere. The high number
of women in Thieu's jails —over 100.000— indicates the rede women play in
the liberation movement. Tens of thousands have been active in the guerrilla
army. The Women's Union of South Vietnam has been a leading organization
of the liberation struggle. Elderly women composed the Army of Mothers of
Fighters, bringing food and medicine to the soldiers on the battlefield. The
desertion rale of the Saigon army, which soared to 20,000 per month during
the 1972 Final Offensive, was partly the work of the political army of
women known as the Long-Haired Army.
In 1970, while working in the rice fields, a mother and
36
ifnrattsffiOEsrassiiiHBaiiEiiN u
daughter-in-law were raped and killed by US soldiers. This drove a group of
Saigon women, including Mrs. Ngo Ba Thanh, a lawyer with a Ph.D. from
Columbia University, to organize the Committee to Defend the' Right to Live
and the Dignity of Vietnamese Women. Their demands were that the dignity
of women be respected, that the right of women to struggle be recognized,
that US troops be withdrawn, and that a coalition government in South
Vietnam be formed.
Two Vietnamese women leaders are especially known and loved
around the world. Madame Nguyen Thi Binh is the Foreign Minister of the
PRG of SVN. Now 47, she has participated continuously in the struggle since
she was eighteen years old. At 24 she was imprisoned and tortured by the
South Vietnamese police under French direction. Today she is working in
her office in Quang Tri Province.
Madame Nguyen Thi Dinh, from a poor peasant family, is now the
Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the army of the PRG of SVN. She was
seventeen when she joined the resistance. In 1945 she led the first armed
uprising against the French, and in 1960 she led the first armed uprising
against the US supported dictatorship of Ngo Dinh Diem.
—Prior to the Vietnamese victory the US seemed invincible. In our
lifetime we had not been aware of any US defeat. Of course the US didn't
win in Korea, but this information was skillfully hidden from us. This
knowledge affects our ability to conceive of revolution in our country,
—The Vietnamese organized around the idea that there is a
difference between the people of the US and the government of the US. By
so doing they helped make it real, A major reason for the success of the
anti-war movement here was the friendship extended by the Vietnamese
people to the US people.
—The significance of the Cease- Fire Agreement is that the strength
of people —in Vietnam, around the world, in the US itself- was pitted against
a handful of men who control technological power and the means of
violence. A small poor country can defeat the largest richest power in the
world, provided its people are united and its cause is just.
What an ominous message for the US empire. What an inspiration
and comfort for all people.
SUPPORT THE VIETNAMESE STRUGGLE
People are protest-weary and now some have been put to sleep. They
believa the media, not only that the war is over, but that the conflict has
receded into the background. Our movement is very much undermined by
accepting these lies. Not only does it alienate us from our history and so
prevent a maturing of movement, but it is also a betrayal of the Vietnamese.
We cannot make the mistake of waiting until the war heats up again
to respond to imperialist plans . Our inaction increases the chances of US
military reintervention. Thieu would fall if the US cut off all aid.
Support for the Vietnamese revolution can be incorporated into
individual practice as well as the program of anti-imperialist organizations.
Whatever work we do, in day care centers, in factories, on the streets or in
jails, education about Vietnam, support for the demands of the Vietnamese
37
people, and resistance to Nixon's aggression are priorities for revolutionaries
organizing at this time. Vietnam should play a role in our everday work,
It is true that Vietnam work cannot be sustained if it is isolated
from the building of the left. However, a left which does not relate to
Vietnam is not a healthy left.
FOUR MAIN ISSUES
ATTACKS ON LIBERATED ZONES
Thieu and his administration have been saying that they expect a
military offensive by the North, but it is Thieu 's forces that are guilty of
attacking and attempting to. reconquer liberated territory. South Vietnamese
pilots have dropped US-made bombs from US-made planes all over the
liberated zones. Thieu is using the pretext of an offensive to cover his own
violations of the Agreement and as an excuse to get more advanced weapons
and more money from the US, in violation of the Agreement. His friend
Nixon may not last as the US president and Thieu knows he has little
support left.
NO AID TO THIEU
In the Agreement, the US recognized the reality of two separate
zones of administration, two governments and two armies in the South.
Nixon has since denied this in his statements. In the Agreement, the US
pledged not to impose an administration or political personality, to respect
the South Vietnamese people's right to self-determination. But US aid and
weapons maintain the Thieu administration. We must warn the people of the
risk of war.
HEALING THE WOUNDS OF WAR
The US has failed to honor Article 21 of the Agreement which calls
for the US to "contribute to healing the wounds of war and to post war
reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North) and
throughout Indochina,"
POLITICAL PRISONERS
The Agreement calls for the release of all political prisoners held in
Thieu 's prisons. But over two hundred thousand people remain imprisoned
by Thieu for political beliefs and actions.
At the time of the signing of the Agreement, Thieu reclassified
thousands of political prisoners as "common criminals" as a tactic to avoid
their release. Many of these people are leaders of the anti-Thieu,
n on -communist, neutralist group —the third force in South Vietnamese
38
politics. According to the terms of the Agreement, they are supposed to help
form the new tripartite Government of National Reconciliation and
Concord. Their release is essential to (he successful implementation of the
Agreement,
The South Vietnamese prisons and figer cages are built by the US
construction comhine RMK-BRJ (Raymond. Morrison, Knudson & Brown,
Root and Jones). Smith and Wesson manufactures the handcuffs used in the
Saigon jails. Prison officials are trained and their funds are supplied by only
one source: the US government.
A PROGRAM TO FOCUS ON VIETNAM
JUSTICE TO WAR CRIMINALS: AMNESTY FOR RESISTERS
The criminals of this period are the aggressors, the imperialists, the
war-makers. Some are corporate leaders who built the sophisticated tools of
death; some are government bureaucrats who wrote the contingency plans
for bombing the dikes; (hose responsible for ecological devastation and
teaching new methods of torture, Some are the perpetrators of massacres
and urban bombings. The Pentagon Papers give a partial list of the crimes
and the criminals; (he Watergate revelations and dissection of the Nixon
organization provides another partial listing. The criminals must he brought
to justice.
The heroes and heroines of this period are those who opposed no
matter how inarticulately, not matter what the medium— (he aggression in
Vietnam. This includes deserters and draft resisters, those dishonorably
discharged and those still in stockades, the court marshalled and the fraggers.
It includes the thousands of G.I.'s who left the service with less than
honorable discharges. It also includes civilians who were arrested and charged
with acts of opposing the war, those who lost jobs and sacrificed careers,
those who are fugitives or still in prison for their opposition.
39
Those who opposed the war in Vietnam deserve total vindication.
Raise the demand:
A SINGLE-TYPE DISCHARGE FOR ALL VETERANS!
UNCONDITIONAL AMNESTY FOR ALL WAR RESISTERS!
THE WAR TO EXPLAIN THE WAR
\k
The falsification of history of the Vietnam War began years ago and
continues to this day. The falsification of history is a most powerful weapon,
used against Black people, working people, women and Native Americans.
Nixon and his strategic advisors —his coterie of ad men— have generated vast
energy, spent millions of dollars and used every political swindle to hide the
true story of the Vietnam War from the US people.
Nixon and his class are seared because the Vietnam Wrar exposed so
much. It is essential to them to convince the US people that withdrawal was
"peace with honor," that resistance to the war inside the US never had any
effect or consequence on its end, Lhat Vietnam was the "most selfless war in
history." The barbaric Christmas bombing was murder for propaganda —a
cruel attempt to cover US defeat with a show of terror. POW's have been
used, trying to whip up a mood of tinny patriotism and panicky reaction
where it would be easy to attack anti-war people and justify the most
barbarous Nixon policies. It hasn't worked, but the battle is far from over.
We must all become teachers, using pictures, maps, books, slides,
and newspaper clippings as tools. The true history of Vietnam must be taken
to the people and fought for. The War to Explain the War should not be
taken lightly by us; it is taken dead seriously by our enemies.
THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT
OF SOUTH VIETNAM
The Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam is an
internationally recognized government, II receives aid from many socialist
countries. In a beautiful and historic act of international solidarity, Fidel
Castro visited Quang Tri Province last year, the first head of state to enter
liberated South Vietnam. In the liberated zones, the foundation for socialism
is being built. South Vietnam could possibly develop the next socialist
revolution to occur in the world. Support for the PRG is a priority.
Life in the liberated zones; of South Vietnam is organized
collectively and run for the benefit of the whole people. North Vietnam has
made tremendous sacrifices and served as the base area for the liberation in
the South. With time, the liberated zones will grow in size and population, as
more and more Vietnamese flee the oppression and dislocation of life under
Thieu. Without the countryside, the cities cannot survive and will eventually
fall.
The liberation armed forces continue to grow and continue to
retaliate for attacks made by Thieu forces against the PRG territory. Only a
massive re-intervention of US ground troops can postpone the eventual
collapse of the Saigon regime. Recognizing this, Nixon tries to ignore the
PRG, referring to Thieu as the "legitimate" government of South Vietnam.
40
The strength of our support for the PRG will affect how long it takes for
reunification to occur. The revolutionary movement must demand that the
Cease-Fire Agreement be upheld and raise the slogan:
DEFEND THE PRG
NO AID TO THIEU
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS
DEFEND THE PRG
HANDS OFF LAOS
US OUT OF CAMBODIA
41
^,
We are a people who understand the price of solidarity. Many
people who are living in comfort, who do not suffer from
hunger or cold, whose house stays here for a hundred years
not destroyed at all, they do not understand the price of
solidarity. But we understand what solidarity means no
matter how small it may be. In our people, there is a saying;
a piece of bread for you when are hungry is more precious
than a banquet when you are better . . . That is why, dear
friends, don't believe that your actions are so
ineffective . . , please don't believe here that anything you
state in solidarity with Vietnam, anything you are doing, any
minute you spend in the cold before the American
embassy . . . any poster painted on the wall ... all these acts
are more valuable for us than all the gold you may give us.
Le Van Sau
PRG representative
December 2, 1972
42
£'^SSaSif'%**g:.:
Fid^l (a^ra o*)4 ^viame, hUt|«*) Thi 'bin!?
43
III. ON THE ROAD:
IMPRESSIONS OF US HISTORY
&/3^%$&9$^$&y$g£&
One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk.
Tashunka TVitko
( Crazy H orse)
The man over there gays women need to be helped in
carriages and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place
everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages or over
puddles, or gives me the best place —and ain't I a woman?
Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted and gathered
into barns, and no man could head me —and ain't I a
woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man
—when I could get it —and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a
woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most of
'em sold into slavery, and when I cried out with mother's
grief, none but Jesus heard me —and ain't I a woman?
Sojouner Truth
I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this
guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood. I had
as I now think vainly flattered myself that without very
much bloodshed it might be done.
John Brown
44
JO O O O O:
A. people's history is a powerful weapon. Jn the hands of the
oppressors, history is twisted and caricatured. In the arsenal of the
revolution, it helps us draw the difficult lessons from past struggles and
identify the resistance which has aiwrays opposed the enemy.
Hut history is a weapon only if used honestly, only if reverses as
well as high-points, accomodation with empire and white supremacy as well
as resistance to it. are looked at straight. -on. Looking at the "Founding
Fathers'' as our radical predecessors or viewing our history as all struggle and
no compromise docs nothing to help us understand our present situation.
The real history of the LS is almost totally unknowrn to the US
people. The most important parts have heen buried, falsified, hidden from
our view. US history is a product of the conflict betwreen European invaders
and Native Americans, wrhite masters and Black slaves, the colonizing army
and the colonized, bosses and workers, male supremacists and women,
imperialists and anti-imperialists. What must be unearthed are the
possibilities for liberation at any given time, how far these were carried, what
held us back, what basis was laid for future struggles, including our own.
This history is not meant to be definitive; it is not a complete or
chronological analysis of [he US past. We focus on and analyze the periods
which mark intersections or qualitative turning points in the people's
struggle. Many critical periods are not examined, others are looked at only in
passing. This analysis represents the beginning of a process, not its final
conclusion. With the US government now organizing for a patriotic outburst
in 1976, this is an important time to begin learning real lessons from. US
history, preparing to take them to the people. The Bicentennial Period can
be transformed into a time of action and organizing, demolishing the myths,
drawing on the examples and the battles which have come before us.
45
IN THE BEGINNING: Genocide, Slavery, Racism
The, true history of the Americas begins with the original peoples of
the hemisphere: the rise of the brilliant societies of the Mayas and the
Tollecs, the Caribs in the Indies, the Inr.as of Peru, the Aztecs of Mexico, the
Tainos of Borinquen (now Puerto Rico), the Iroquois of the Northeast and
the Pueblos in the Southwest of the US. This history continues today from
Latin America to Alaska.
The first significant European intervention was by Christopher
Columbus, an Italian in the pay of Genoan capital, who sailed under the flag
of Spain. Columbus noted his first day on American soil that "the people are
ingenious and would make good servants." When Columbus returned to
Hispaniola (Haiti-Santo Domingo), the occupying army he left to oversee the
mining of Hispanolian gold had been wiped out by the Carib people.
Columbus attacked again, this time subduing the resistance and beginning
systematic genocide against the Indians. Jn 1492, there were somewhat
under 300,000 American Indians living in Hispaniola. By 1512, there were
less than 14,000 Indians left on the Columbus plantations.
Whole areas lost their native populations in this way as the Spanish
colonialists worked millions of Indians to death. Since mines and plantations
are run for profit, and couldn't work without slaves, the Spanish did two
things: they turned to the trade in African slaves to "rcpopulate" the
Caribbean, and they also "rationalized" their plantation system. This was to
insure that the new slaves would live Ions enough to ''breed."
In Mexico and South America, the Spanish adopted a system of
peonage, a form of serfdom, A class of Mestizos, persons of Spanish and
Indian descent, developed. This system was carried to what is now the
Southwest and California.
The British colonies were populated mainly by settlers. A wrhole
group of dissenters, poor farmers, and workers lied poverty and oppression
to come to the New World. Many were indentured servants, or chronically
unemployed. Others were poor people sentenced to long prison terms or
deportation for small crimes. There were also some rich "gentlemen farmers"
and mercenaries out for loot.
There was plenty of land in North America to be had by stealing it
from the American Indians. In the South, land was suitable for tobacco,
indigo, rice, sugar eane, and eventually, cotton. These crops required a
plantation economy and a large labor force. But with so much land for the
taking, who would labor cheaply enough to make the plantation owners
rich ?
Oniy forced labor —slaves. Chattel slaves that is, not people but
commodities, having no family worth respecting, no personal rights or
property, bound for life and generations to come.
Historically, the cultural and social justification of slavery had been
religious. This was true during the Crusades in Europe and in the Mideast,
and was carried by feudal Spain into its conquests in the Caribbean and
South and Central America. Religion was the main ideological control of
feudal society and early capitalism. Chattel slavery was defended as the
means of saving the souls of "ignorant heathens" from eternal hell-fire by
46
giving them the "blessing" of Christianity.
When Columbus exterminated the Indians of the Caribbean and
replaced them with Black staves from Africa, several important changes
occurred. The plantations grew cash crops for the market and became highly
profitable. Slavery became the most powerful lever of expanding capitalism.
The slave trade in human bodies was itself most profitable; together with
cheaper food and raw materials, this assured the victory of booming
mercantile capitalism over the weaker economy of feudalism.
Slavery was never a separate economy in the Caribbean or the
Southern colonies of North America —it served the capitalist market and
capitalist production from the very first. Huge profits from the slave trade
went to the commercial ports of the budding industrial areas of the
Northeast and New York, In short, the cornerstone of "free enterprise" is
the enslavement of Black Africans.
In the British colonies of North America, unlike the Spanish
colonies, there was a population of poor workers and farmers, competing
religious groups, plus traditions of dissent and ideas about "free-born
Englishmen." No matter how idealized these notions might have been, the
fact of class struggle by a mainly Anglo, Dutch, and German white
population made the problems of control different than those of the
Caribbean where there were no Spanish workers, other than soldiers. The
Spanish Catholic Church, as a unified institution of the Spanish authoritarian
state, was itself a powerful means of control with its missions, which were
actually plantations as well.
In the southern part of the Brit ish colonies of North America,
conversion of Blacks to Christianity tended to break down the traditional
barriers between poor, indentured whites and Black slaves. During the 17th
century, Blacks and whites escaped together from forced labor, intermarried,
rebelled together in the West Indies, Virginia, South Carolina and Maryland.
Virginia planters passed a Fugitive Act in 1643 which ordered that runaway
slaves should serve additional time twice the length of their absence and
should be branded with an R (for rogue) for a second offense.
Struggles continued to develop around length of service and
working conditions. The faintest possibility of unity among the different
classes of the oppressed terrified the slaveowners. Beeause of this,
distinctions of color and origin were promoted into an entire system of
racism. Africans were made slaves for life, while the white servants were to
be freed after a set period. The planters began the conscious cultivation of
the whites as overseers, using the myth of the "free-born Englishman" in
contrast to the African —now deemed an animal, less than human.
Discrimination based on color did already exist in Europe, North
Africa ind the Mideast. However, these ideas were still incidental and
subordinate to concepts of native or foreigner, Christian or pagan, aristocrat
or peasant.
Racism as a prime social and cultural dividing line was born in
North America, out of slavery —it was born out of greed for profit,
perpetrated by deception and a monopoly of firearms, not of biological
superiority real or imagined. The notion that slavery is somehow based upon
racial and cultural inferiority of African and other Third World peoples has
been deeply embedded into every US institution as the chief means of
brainwashing and using the white population.
47
The importance of this to us is that it begins to focus on too other,
hidden side of our history that the rulers conceal.
Racism is not only directed at Black people -it is also aimed at
controlling whites to keep Black people in slavery, and the rulers firmly in
command.
The institutionalizing of white supremacy created a structure to
divide the white worker and small farmer from the Black slave. Coupled with
the economic bribe of white privilege, it is the corner-stone of US history,
the rock upon which capitalism and imperialism have been erected. It is not:
the material bribe alone that is effective; iL the bribe plus self-justification,
social approval and status, backed up by punishment for non-conformity,
that does the trick.
The US invented a new kind of racism and a more horrible form of
slavery. It has been building on this ever since; and exporting its variety of
racism to the rest of the world.
The African slave trade was an unprecedented event in human
history. The modern slave trade went on lor 350 years. It came to an end
about 100 years ago. Africans were kidnapped on the West ("oat of Africa
and brought to the West Indies in exchange for tobacco, cotton, rice and
molasses. In turn, slaves and the sugar products were carried to the mainland
colonies, which sentfood to the West Indies, tobacco and rice lo Europe, and
distilled rum (from molasses) to Africa. The first African slave arrived here in
1619. By 1770, 4/5 of all colonial exports was rum to Africa. Ten to fifteen
million Africans were landed in the Americas. More than that —estimates
range from between 20 and 200 million- died on the way. This was the
triangular slave trade, the very foundation of rising capitalism.
NATIVE AMERICAN RESISTANCE: The Early Stages
Will we let ourselves be destroyed in our turn without a
struggle, give up our homes, our country bequetned to us by
the Great Spirit, the graves of our dead and everything that is
dear and sacred to us f I know you will cry with me," Never,
Never!
Teeumtha
In North America, Native Americans prevented their enslavement as
a people by fighting for their land and freedom. Indians waged protracted
wars of resistance, holding out in parts of the US until 1 SJ90. In spite of the
destruction of whole nations, Indian culture and Indian people survive and
fight to this day.
Perhaps two million Native Americans within what is now the US
were killed in battle, died as slaves due to extreme overwork and little food,
or from white man's diseases like measles and small-pox. They could not be
captured in sufficient numbers to supply the labor force needed to enrich
the European slaveowners and merchants.
When the attempt to enslave Indians failed, the colonizers went on
to destroy Indian power and seize their land. King Phillip, leader of the
48
Wampanoags (the rescuers of the starving Pilgrims -an event ritualized at
Thanksgiving) understood what was happening. He worked to bring together
neighboring nations and drive the settlers out. His armies fought hard,
attacking 52 of the 90 New England colonial towns. Internal disputes, a hard
winter, betrayals and superior fire-power defeated the rebellion, which ended
in August, 1676. Many Indians, along with King Phillip, were killed.
During the colonial period, except at the very first when the settlers
were weak and couldn't make it on their own, few whites accepted Indians
as human beings. Some backwood people, a number of runaway servants,
religious outcasts and dissenters were friendly. Considerable numbers of
escaped slaves also developed ties with Indian people, notably the Seminoles
in Florida.
But, the prevailing attitudes were expressed by the Dutch patroons
introducing tomahawks in New Amsterdam (later to become New York
City) to frontiersmen eager to scalp Indians for $100 bounty —a huge sum
lor those days. This was the origin of the saying, "The only good Indian is a
dead Indian." The colonist came from poor, depressed parts of Europe, eager
for land. The desire for land, and with it freedom from servitude and wage
labor, dominated early colonial and US history. Land ownership was a viable
resolution of many social and class contradictions.
In 1763, the British forbade colonial expansion beyond the
Appalachian mountains. This curbed the land speculations of the wealthiest
colonialists, like George Washington, Ben Franklin and Patrick Henry. It was
one of the causes of the Revolution of 1776.
After the Revolution, the speculators felt free to move into the
West. Many Indian tribes understood the government's intentions. Wrhile the
American Revolution was fought against the fetters imposed by British
colonialism on the rapidly developing colonial economy, it was certainly not
fought in the interests of either Native Americans or Black slaves. Consider
the following condemnation of King George in the Declaration of
Independence:
He has excited domestic insurrection amongst us and has
endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of the frontiers, the
merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
Declaration of Independence
Washington's troops burned Iroquois villages during the
Revolutionary War. Not one major tribe lined up with the colonists during
the Revolution.
In 1787, Congress authorized the takeover of the Ohio Valley. The
Shawnee and the Miami, united by thirty years of struggle, fought back. Led
by Little Turtle, they defeated a 1400-man US force in 1790, and in 1791
routed St. Clair's army of two thousand. In 1794, Mad Anthony Wayne
invaded Indian territory, defeated the Shawnee at Fallen Timbers, and
celebrated the victory by burning every Indian village on the way back to his
fort. The victors forced the Treaty of Greenville upon the Indians and
poured in missionaries, whiskey and settlers. But the Indians still did not
capitulate.
49
From the Shawnee arose a great American Indian leader, Tecumtha
(Panther -Lying-in-Wait). He rallied the nations, travelling from Canada
(Iroquois land) to Missouri (Osage territory1* to Florida (Seminole nation).
He argued for unified resistance, denounced alcohol, and with the help
of his brother, called for revival of Indian culture and ways. He saw the
moment as a strategic one: "a last chance such as will never occur again for
us Indians of North America to form ourselves into one great combination."
Tecumtha allied with the British in the War of 1812, starting off by
capturing Detroit. The British betrayed Tecumtha, who died fighting a year
later.
President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from
France in 1803. This territory, almost equal in size to the entire US of that
date, was actually the land of the Sauk, Fox and other Indian tribes. Andrew
Jackson, known as Sharp Knife to the Cherokees, rose to the Presidency by
winning fame as an Indian killer and village burner. He used charges of Indian
violence to move into Florida, Texas and Canada. Jackson was a popular
hero: nearly everyone wanted more land, the only disputes were over how
best to grab it from the Indians. Spearheading the land grab, the US Army
established forts throughout the Indian territory, and began offensive
operations. General Wmfield Scott, a leading figure in US wars against
Mexico, was responsible for the Trail of Tears of the Cherokees in 1838. An
entire people were forcibly removed from their homeland in the
Southeastern US and marched all the way to a reservation in Oklahoma. The
wars against the Indians, like the war against Mexico in 1848, was a war of
conquest, a war for land.
Demands now being made by Native Americans for land for their
own sovereignty as separate nations challenge alb the terms upon which the
US built its empire, and this is why the Native American movement has a
special significance for people fighting US imperialism.
50
BLACK RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY AND
THE RISE OF THE ABOLITIONIST AND WOMEN'S MOVEMENTS
The growing conflict between the Northern and Southern systems
of production laid a basis for the Civil War. The Southern system was based
on slavery and the cultivation of cotton as a main crop. In 1793, the
invention of the cotton gin gave the cotton industry, and with it slavery, a
new economic boost. It made cleaning the Southern short-staple cotton
fairly efficient. More abundant and cheaper cotton also helped expand the
textile industry in the Northeast, which became the center for
manufacturing, Cotton cultivation exhausted the soil, which created the
continuing need for expansion of the plantation system into new territory.
Up to 1860, the Southern slaveowners attempted to expand the
slave system, Seaboard Atlantic states turned to slave breeding, while the
expansionists eyed Cuba and Central America. Northern collaboration and
compromise aided the planters. The seizure of Texas in 1836 from Mexico
and its admission to the Union was part of slave-owners' plots to introduce
six new slave states into the Union.
But many Northern industrialists and financiers recognized that the
further spread of slavery would stifle their own ambitions; more profits and
more political stability could be had by opening up the West and Southwest
to industrial exploitation and "free farming," The planters won a great legal
victory in 1857, with the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision which
sanctioned the introduction of slavery into any free territory, even against
the will of the majority of the settlers.
It wras the continued resistance of Black slaves and their allies which
finally brought matters to a head. As early as 1793, Toussaint L'Ouverture
led a famous slave revolution in Haiti against the French. The Haitian
Revolution terrified the Southern slaveowners who feared that the example
would spark similar uprisings in North America. Toussaint's forces used
drums to communicate with each other; drums were now banned from the
Southern plantations. Each rebellion spread panic throughout the
slave-holding South: Gabriel Prossers's in Virginia in 1800; Denmark Vesey's
in South Carolina in 1822; the Amistad Mutiny led by Joseph Cinque (from
whom Ruchel Cinque Magee and SLA Field Marshal Cinque take their names
today) in 1831; and Nat Turner's uprisings in Virginia in 1831. In 1829,
David Walker, a freed Black man, published David Walker's Appeal, which
called upon the slaves to rise up in revolution against their bondage.
Escape was a major form of slave resistance. Black soldiers
returning from the War of 1812 brought back the news that slavery was
outlawed in Canada. Routes of flight, twisting networks of paths, developed
across the Appalachians, up thru the Ohio and along the Eastern seacoast.
These were the routes of the Underground Railroad, which in the 1840's
prided itself on being the only railroad guaranteed not to break down. In the
1850's, something like five hundred Black people a year penetrated the
South under the most dangerous conditions to lead others to freedom.
Harriet Tubman —called Moses by the slaves— was the most famous
conductor. Not intimidated by a huge bounty on her head, she led hundreds
North without ever losing a passenger. She said:
51
"There are two things I've got a right
to, and these are death and liberty. One or the other I mean
to have. No one will take me back alive."
"'T5..V
■','*£>■'■
-*;■
$ ttliifr fair of :%fyivhg£
, By RICH AMD CLAGETT
On Tuesday, Match &ih> 1833 at 1.-09 P. X, the folhminff <
SUtvot vftll be sold at Posters Mart, in Charleston, AC
Miscellaneous Lots of Negroe*, mostly house servants, soniJ ^-.y \A
for field work. '* ]. ^
Condition*: H eaah, balance by bond, beariaj ixtereat from. Aai*
,•1 ml*. Payable in e»e to hroywrt to be a«ctu*4'fcy m auoiajage «f tbe
fTeffroet, and appiviaaw peswonal aecnrity. AtteiioneOT Will pay JpQT
the papers.
K valuable Negro woman, accustomed to all kinds of bouse work. 1$ a good
plats cook, and excellent dairy maid, washes tod irons, Sbebas four children, one
a girl about 13 years of age, another 7, a boy about 5, and an infaat 11 month* old.
2 of the children will be sold with mother, tbe others separately, if it best suits tbe
purchaser. . , .„-
A very valuable Blacksmith, wife and daughters; tbe. Smith is in the prime
of life, arid a perfect master at his trade. His wife about 27 years old, and his
daughters 12 and 10 year* old have been brought up as bouse servants, and as such
are very valuable. Also for sale I likely young negro wenches, one of whom is 16
tbe other 13, both of whom have been taught and accustomed to the duties of house
servants. Tbe 16 year old wench has one eye.
A likely yellow girl about 17 or IB years old, has been accustomed to all kinds
of house and garden work. She is sold for no fault. Sound as a dollar.
House servants! The owner of a family destHbed herein, would sell tbem
for a good price only, they are offered for no fault whatever, but because they can
be done without, and money ist needed* He has been, offered SI 250. Tbey consist of ~
a fiian 30 to 33 years old, who has beeyrai&ed in a genteel Virginia family as house
servant Carriage driver etc, m all-wnicb h£ excels. His wife a likely wench Of 25 to
10 raised in like manner, as chamber maid, seamstress, nurse etc., their rw6">chi)d-
ren, girls of 12 and 4 or 5. They are bright mulattos*. 6f mild tractable dispositions,
unassuming manners, and of g*a tee? appearance and well worthy the notice of a
gentleman of fortune needing such.
v Also 14 Negro Wenches fang in % from 16 to 25 years of age, all sound and-'
HCftpable/cf doing a good days work in the house or field.
■X .• . ■ ■ ■ _ ■ V ~ -■■■ -*sYi-- ' J- ;
', ■ ■ . - - ■■■■,'.: ■ '."V- A' -J ■*..*■
*V
■~v
3^&i
52
The success of the Underground Railroad resulted in the passage of
the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which ordered Northerners to return escaped
slaves to the South and legalized the practice of vigilantes and slave-hunters,
Quakers, New Englanders, Permsyivaniaiis, Ohioans cooperated with Black
people to rescue some 75,000 slaves in this brave episode in our history.
Black resistance defined the militant terms of the anti-slavery fight,
and was an example to the two mass movements which grew up alongside
the Black struggle —the Women's Movement and the Abolitionists.
During the early 1800's large numbers of women entered the textile
mills and factories of New England for the first time. Often they found
themselves at odds with the 19th century standards of factory decorum and
with the fact that they were paid far less than men doing the same work. The
first strike by women took place in Dover, New Hampshire mills in 1828.
Proletarianization of US women in the Northeast, the social contact in the
mills, was a background for the upsurge in consciousness and protest among
women which would develop over the next few decades. Bourgeois women,
recently freed from household chores like weaving, sewing
and soap-making, also began to chafe at the limitations imposed on them
because of sex.
From the earliest days of the anti-slavery fight, courageous women
like Fanny Wright and Maria W. Stewart defied scorn and ridicule in order to
speak out in public. Soon Female Anti-Siavery Societies were formed
throughout the North, trying to recruit activists for the Underground
Railway, to write, persuade, and awaken their sisters to the tyranny of
slavery. Women raised both the issue of abolition and equality for women.
Slaveholders and male supremacists responded with threats of mob violence
and bitter attacks on the women's character and reputations. Angelina and
Sarah Grimke, born to a Southern slave-holding family, spoke out on "both
freedoms" and opposed more conservative elements in the anti-slavery
movement who were afraid of losing support if the subject of women's
freedom was raised.
In 1840, the Anti-Slavery Convention in London refused to seat
women. Experienced and tireless US women abolitionists were forced to sit
behind curtains while the main debate went on. Charles Revson, a Black
abolitionist, and William Lloyd Garrison, joined the women as a protest.
Eight years later, the women's convention at Seneca Falls, New York, called
for unconditional equality for women:
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and
usurpations on the part of man towards woman, having in
direct object the establishment of absolute tyranny over her.
To prove this, let facts he submitted to a candid v/ortd.
Seneca Falls
For over a quarter of a century, until a serious split developed after
the Civil War, the two movements —to free the slaves and to liberate
women— nourished and strengthened each other. White women openly
advocated freedom for Black people; white and Black women walked calmly
53
:|HI:?M
'*uLt£
John wou^0dy~1ie$ tnnouldring in thegn^i^^t ■■■ ™x**-? ■*■■■ "■-■
John B«a|pNKwfy fei a-mo«ldf{«f in th4^0$'}'^
John S^mn's body lies a-mou,J-' — — **?- -"i**'**1**-
B»* t$j soui^oes Tnarcfcfnjj on
z&b
Jf^rt Brown's body lies a-mou^it^^the^^^
*,j%ie weep *fe sons of bondage mtofH ''^"^^
tfejMjfJi fee test ftts life in struggling for ^jIswb^
lowi is marching on. '-'■ ■'•'" ■"-':■";■■" V- -.^■>"*:n"''iN*~... .
^^
V
''''t'..'**-''
John Br§g^:diedthat the slw&ihtgfobef&fr .\--fy.
John BroW^^ied that the staves Mgktbefiee, :■ ''-; ■'"'■;
/ofe» firoiMifaW rfiaf the slaves rtitgjhihefree,
But his somMies marching on, <■";■ ,
lf«f7-'- * ■ . ■. .<,.\* ■,.;.■■ :.,
He capm0$M$rper's Ferry with his i$ mm-dotmti,- v'^ii/^ '^' ;
He frigh^0Mmd, Vtrginny tjU sketremb^0irpugHi^/hroughi '
They ^^m' for a traitor, thm^^s'^.t^r crewt/pj0:_j^
A^trk<t'$ w'Orkitig fonts' are <& remembe^'t^Ms^^^k.-;.^
'^'•^i^^wprkh^f^iSiBze aU remembering m^t^'J ^f ■:■§■■
'tht-gr&tie pf old John Brown, "$"'.' ■"■"■■ .j^ -^sShv ■^■p-"0.''W
:;'' " ■ ■ ;■" ' ■■:."■ : -■''.„" .■■^■■.."^'".'.•.. - . V"1" •'"'T ^jS*'"^"'*'^*.'" ■
' ■&*&■;
.",,"i'aiT.t<: ■ ■■ , - -
together thru mobs of angry men, openly challenging the paranoia of
plantation morality with its emphasis on the protection of dependent white
women. This was a bold blow to racist and sexist ideology.
Contrary to the lies of official bourgeois history, the abolitionists
were not abstract moralists, but a social movement based on the urgent
necessity to end slavery. There were fierce struggles within the movement
over goals and tactics. The abolitionists were split over the question of
revolutionary violence, with a substantial number of white abolitionists
unwilling to accept the terms of the anti-slavery struggle. The leadership of
free Black people and escaped slaves like Henry Garnet, David Walker,
Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth consistently
pushed the abolitionists to more militant stands. National conventions of
Black people in the North advocated the armed overthrow of the slave
system while some abolitionists put forward notions of slaves going quietly
back to Africa. Douglass' paper, The North Star, was a voice for immediate
emancipation and full rights for Blacks. Douglass argued for militant
resistance to slavery:
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess
to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who
want crops without plowing up the ground. They want the
ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.
The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one,
and it may he both moral and physical, but it must be a
struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never
did, and it never will.
At their best, the abolitionists refused to ignore, and more, refused
to let anyone else ignore, the reality of slavery. We see in the abolitionists
the beginnings of a tradition of mass white support for Black liberation; the
tensions and disagreements within the movement were not unlike those our
own movement has faced —especially concerning Black people's right to
direct their own struggle.
Abolitionists were called fanatics, lunatics and promoters of
rebellion. Garrison's defense of the Nat Turner Rebellion, in which 60 white
people were killed, brought the wrath of the slavery forces upon him. But he
escalated, carrying out a speaking tour of New England. From the large
crowds which turned out to hear him came the first meeting for the New
England Anti-Slavery Society held on January 1, 1832. They called for
immediate emancipation of slaves without any compensation to the
slaveowners.
Simultaneously, a campaign for education and literacy went on
clandestinely in the South, more openly in the North. The precious and
outlawed right of Black people to read became a battleground —as it yet is
today. Prudence Crandall opened her school in Connecticut to twenty or
thirty Black girls in 1831; this led to her imprisonment, the burning down of
her house, and attempts to suppress the school.
Abolitionists like the Grimke sisters, Frederick Douglass, Harriet
Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Wendell Phillips engaged in struggles for
prison reforms, against capital punishment, in support of Indian rights, and
equal rights for women. Theodore Parker hid Black fugitives in his Boston
church and protected them with guns.
And then there was old Osawatamie, John Brown. Brown led the
four years of guerrilla warfare in Kansas, which kept that state from falling
to the slavers. It was this victory in Kansas which drove the South to secede
before the anti-slavery forces grew too much stronger. W.E.B. Du Bois
marked this as the start of the Civil War.
In 1859, John Brown, with a band of Kansas free-soilers and
ex-slaves, attacked the Harper's Ferry arsenal in Western Virginia, in direct
response to the Dred Scott decision, Harriet Tubman planned to participate
but was too ill to go along. John Brown's courage and sacrifice have been
maligned as insanity, but he had a practical plan which almost worked.
Even in defeat, he accomplished his stated goal of polarizing the mass of
Northerners against slavery. Brown's action helped destroy the slave
economy of Virginia as many plantation owners, terrified by the accelerating
number of slave uprisings following Brown's raid, sold their slaves in panic.
The Harpers' Ferry action was an effective use of armed struggle to
sharpen an already-ripe political situation. John Brown is an example to us
of dedication, belief in people's power to affect history and the willingness
to risk everything in the cause of liberation.
RECONSTRUCTION AND BETRAYAL
The Civil War began as a war fought by white people over the
"future of the Union." At first, the US government ignored Black people;
there was no attempt to recruit them into the Union Army, they were not
allowed to enlist. Union soldiers were forbidden to sing "John Brown's
Body." Slavery, the underlying cause of the war, was a suppressed issue.
Over time, pushed by its wartime need for laborers and soldiers,
and by the eagerness of Black people to fight against the slave-owners, the
North moved toward emancipation. Fugitive slaves, including Harriet
Tubman, joined the Northern forces. General Tubman led her troops in
dangerous scouting and guerrilla operations during the war.
With emancipation in 1863, thousands of Blacks joined the army.
Before the war's end, 200,000 Black people fought for the Union, often in
the front lines as shock troops; 300,000 more helped as laborers, scouts and
spies for the North. Many other Black women and men left the plantations,
in a general strike against the planters. This crippled the slave economy and
the Southern war effort.
The Emancipation Proclamation legally freed four million Black
people from chattel slavery, Abraham Lincoln acted in order to win the war
and beeause the slaves were already freeing themselves. This was an
important victory for Black people and the Abolitionist movement they had
inspired. A sense of optimism and determination to consolidate and extend
their gains swept thru the Black population in the South. In the post-war
Reconstruction period, unique in US history, Blacks and their white allies
began a remarkable effort to transform the Southern system.
Black historians —notably DuBois— have challenged the lies of the
standard history of Reconstruction, which all of us were taught in school. In
his book Black Reconstruction, DuBois catalogues the tremendous
achievements of the Reconstruction era : poor and Black people participating
56
in government for the first time, voting and holding office; the introduction
of progressive income tax; the first massive public school program in the
South; tentative attempts at land redistribution; the temporary
disenfranchisement of many planters/slaveholders; the abolition of
imprisonment for debt; the expansion of women's rights in marriage. Black
people raised the demand for "forty acres and a mule" for every ex-slave,
since without land reform, emancipation would leave them at the mercy of
the planter class. This demand was never met because its content challenged
not only the planters but also the Northern interests who were in the process
of taking over Southern agriculture.
Gains made in public education are testimony to the progressive
character of Reconstruction. At the end of the Civil War, there were no
public schools in the South; by 1870 there were 230,000 children in 4300
schools. This was the result of an astonishing effort by hundreds of Northern
volunteers and abolitionists, with the substantial support of Southern Black
communities and families. 45% of the teachers were women —Black women
from the South, white women from the North. The schools they built
survived the overthrow of Reconstruction, but were later rigidly segregated
by race.
This was a time of slow, painstaking efforts by Blacks to build
working relationships with the dispossessed whites of the South, alliances
which never developed fully. They were finally shattered when Northern
capital and the remnants of the old planter class re-assumed control. The
support of poor whites, working people and other progressive whites for
Reconstruction also involved tens of thousands of Northern white men and
women who came South as volunteers —the "carpetbaggers," slandered and
defamed by later generations. Reconstruction was one of the high points of
unity between Black and white overcoming white supremacy and racism in
our history. This is why it has been written out of the history texts.
The pro-Reconstruction forces had great strength for a while. They
faded by only one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson after
impeaching him for supporting the ex-slaveowners and sabotaging
Reconstruction. Johnson won because the capitalist North, victorious over
its former and future partners, the Southern planters, was eager to get on
with the conquest of the West. Crushing Reconstruction involved the
conscious reinstatement of while supremacy patterns in order to destroy a
kind of people's unity which, if not defeated in the South, could have spread
to class war in the North itself.
The counterrevolution came disguised as the "compromise of
1877." The word "compromise" should read "betrayal:" Northern
Republicans sold out the Black population by allowing federal troops to be
withdrawn from the South, leaving ex-slaves and white Reeonstructionists
open to the terror-campaigns of the planter class. Some of these troops were
then sent North to help break strikes; others were used in the final military
campaigns against the Oglalas, Hunkpapas, Cheyennes and Nez Perce.
A new power alliance emerged in the US: old and new Southern
planters were restored to local power by accepting Northern capital's
domination in both Southern agriculture and industry, This rule was
enforced by the terror of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was established by the
-Ji. '^
3
57
planter class to prevent Black people and their white allies from
consolidating their political gains. Through the Klan, like the old slave
patrols, poor whites helped terrorize and control Blacks. Black people were
forced back into subjugation through mob violence and lynching, Jim Crow
laws and wholesale disenfranchisemcnt, and white skin became the cultural
definition of power once again. While there were scattered attempts at
Black-white unity in these days, they fell apart as many poor whites
destroyed the basis for genuine alliance by defending white supremacy.
With the planters restored to the land, Black people were thrust
back into a new form of slavery -sharecropping. Sharecroppers rented plots
of land from the planters, and in return, kept a small share of what they
produced. Sharecroppers provided the planters with the bulk of the cotton
crop, and had to rent tools and other necessities from them. Black
sharecroppers were in debt, bound to the planters, enslaved. The
consolidation of class rule and the crushing of the popular movement
wrecked the hopes for a new South; the South remains an underdeveloped
region of the US to this day.
Defeating Reconstruction was a prerequisite to the completion of
continental expansion and the strengthening of capitalist power. It was
accomplished by terror, the lynch rope and treachery. Supposed white allies
deserted Black freedmen and women. The hopeful possibilities of the era
were shattered by all the forces of racist order and a decisive step was taken
on the road to full-blown, modern US imperialism.
EXPANSION AND CONQUEST:
THE BIRTH OF MODERN US IMPERIALISM
Throughout this time, the US was consolidating its hold over
Mexican and Indian land. Once New Mexico and California were seized, the
looting of land and minerals proceeded rapidly. Through the destruction of
Mexican land titles, Mestizo farmers were reduced to laborers on their own
land. Mexicans, along with imported Chinese and Filipino laborers, became
the chief cheap labor supply for the farms, cattle ranches, mines and
railroads of this strategic part of the West. California provided important
deep water ports on the Pacific Ocean, industrial sites and gold.
Northern industrialists had moved ahead with the Transcontinental
and Santa Fe Railroads. The former was built by Chinese and Irish labor, the
latter by Mexicans. As railroads moved West, the last of the Indian lands
were conquered. By the late 1870V the heart of the Indian resistance was
shattered. Crazy Horse was assassinated by government agents in 1877 at
Fort Robinson. Nebraska. In 1890, the US Army committed the Wounded
Knee Massacre, Rumors of an Indian resurgence had been sweeping the
country. The Ghost Dance, a Paiute prophecy of a return to Native power,
had taken root at Pine Ridge Reservation. When the US Army attacked on
December 29, 1890 it was not a spontaneous crime. It was an attempt to
wipe out "hostile" Indians, to commit genocide against the Oglala nation.
Over 300 Indians were killed, many women and children —afterwards, 18
cavalry-men received Congressional Medals of honor for "gallantry" and
"bravery."
58
This was the age of the robber barons, the time when Rockefeller,
Morgan and Carnegie made (hen first stolen fortunes. The normal cycles of
capitalist production glutted markets and caused a series of depressions. In
the 27 years between the panic of 1873 and 1900, over half were years of
depression. As the big industrialists and financiers made their money, the
people went hungry and were forced out of work. Capitalism squeezed its
domestic work force to the bone, and the workers in the new Morthern and
Western industrial centers of the working class raised the spectre of class
warfare at a Lime when the frontier, the traditional safety valve for class
discontent . was shrinking. Workers were crowding the cities, forming new
communities, understanding the need for collective action.
The era of monopoly capitalism was dawning. The ruling class
looked to colonial expansion as the solution to economic crisis and rising
class discontent.
Revolt within the Spanish Empire opened opportunities in the
Caribbean and the Philippine Islands, Rival imperialist powers were engaged
in full-scale contention over the penetration of China, so the idea of a
strategic base in the Philippines was tempting.
The Spanish -American War of 1898 was a case of imperialist
aggression cloaked in democratic slogans. The McKinley Administration at
first justified the war as an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist support to the
rehelling Cuban, Puerto Rican and Filipino peoples. The Battle ship Maine
was sent to Havana and sunk as a final incitement.
Puerto Rico was seized as a US colony. Cuba was not seized
outright: it was inslead made a protectorate with control imposed by (tie US
through ihe hated Piatt Amendment. The US occupied Guantanamo and set
up a naval base there. This base remains a constant US colonial presence in
liberated Cuba.
In the Philippines, Theodore Roosevelt, the Assistant Secretary of
the Navy, and Senator Cabot Uodge of Massachusetts hatched plots with
Admiral Dewey to seize Manila and prepare armed intervention to reeolonize
the Island. Ry the lime Dewey got there, the Filipino liberation forces had
taken all I lie rest: of the country from the Spanish. A phony attack on US
lines outside of Manila was staged (a model for the "attack" Johnson staged
on the \,S Navy in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1965) and the
counterrevolutionary war was on. It lasted six years, required a US force of
90,000 soldiers at it's peak, and ended with 600,000 Filipinos dead on Luzon
Island ulonc: Those who lived found themselves under harsher rule than even
that of Spain. Filipinos to tins day are fighting guerrilla warfare against
US-supplied troops ami a US backed neoeolonial regime.
As the war went on, and US soliders died from wounds and
diseases, the truth about Filipino resistance came out and direct racist and
economic appeals to workers and businessmen replaced cover-ups about
fighting for Filipino freedom. William Randolph Hearst made his fortune by
whipping up racist war fever in his columns. The Hearst papers ran banner
headlines, arguing that the "yellow- peril1' must he defeated.
There was opposition —individuals Like Mark Twain, an
anti-imperialist league in Massachusetts which grew to have branches in
Chicago and the Far West, some workers' organizations (especially among
the Koston Irish), plus a few abolitionist and populist veterans. But it is
important to understand why. in spite of strong anti-colonial traditions going
59
back to Revolutionary War days, most people finally accepted this leap into
full-fledged and open imperialism.
Class struggle at home was muted by plunder abroad. Many workers
supported imperialist expansion as an acceptable way to ease economic crisis
in the US. With the war against the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Cuba, many
US citizens condoned imperialism in the same way they had grown
accustomed to justifying genocide against Native Americans or lynching of
Black sharecroppers.
The ruling class organized for world empire in the same ways it
organized for continental conquest. Racism against Mexican farm-hands and
Chinese laborers was now turned against Cubans, Filipinos and Puerto Ricans.
Internationalism —the commitment to unity in struggle with other people in
other lands against the common enemy— does not spring automatically from
a culture poisoned by slavery, internal colonization and the slaughter of the
native population. It has to be fought for constantly.
Moreover, when leaders of the American Federation of Labor, like
Samuel Gompers, ended up supporting the war against the Philippines, they
began more and more to sabotage the struggles of millions of unorganized
immigrant laborers, women and unskilled workers. They looked down on
these workers as outcasts, and often showed the same contempt for them as
the despised Filipinos and Blacks.
The AFL came to represent mainly the aristocracy of labor. Daniel
de Leon, a socialist organizer, called the AFL the ''labor lieutenants of the
capitalist class." Based in the highly skilled crafts, elitist, all white, opposed
to militancy, the AFL even then served as an emergency brake on the class
struggle.
THE OPPOSITION:
Miners, Women, Immigrants, Wobblies
Alongside this history of accomodation to imperialism, there are
also the great movements and acts of opposition —the stirrings, the militant
strikes, the courage of the Hay market martyrs, the women's
shirt waistmakers, the Wobblies, the Molly Maguires, the Western Federation
of Miners, the day-to-day survival struggles of the immigrants. In this disloyal
oppositon, we can recognize our roots.
On May 4, 1886, in Chicago, a workers' rally was called to protest
the murder of striking McCormick Harvester employees a few days before.
As it ended, a bomb was tossed killing one policeman. Seven labor and
anarchist leaders were framed and convicted and four were executed for the
act. From this struggle, people all around the world commemorate May Day.
The city of Chicago erected a monument to police power —the statue of a
policeman which, until recently, stood in Haymarket Square.
In the 1890's, miners in Colorado and Tdaho faced the guns of
federal and state troops as they fought for the eight hour day. After long
hours in the mines, workers would meet, teach each other to read, argue
politics, talk about socialism and revolution. In 1892, the Western
Federation of Miners formed, an organization which led major strikes
60
throughout the next decade. In the same year, the Homestead Strike was
crushed when federal troops massacred striking steelworkers in Pennsylvania.
In the early 1900's, the labor force underwent a rapid
transformation as fifteen million immigrants came to the US. Those who
came from Europe settled in the industrial and commercial centers in the
East and Midwest, Subject to discrimination, viewed as "unamcrican" by
much of the population, they initiated and led some of the fiercest US labor
struggles.
A movement arose in this period called the Industrial Workers of
the World -the Wobblies. The preamble to the IWW constitution, written in
1905, reads;
The working class and the employing class have nothing in
common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want
are found among millions of working people and the few,
who make up the employing class, have all the good things
of life.
Between these two classes, a struggle must go on until the
workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of
the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the
wage system.
61
The Wobblies came from the miners' strikes in Colorado, from the
immigrant textile workers of the Eastern commercial centers, from women
workers, from the lumberworkers of the Far West. The IWW challenged the
narrow and elitist craft union approach of the AFL and advocated industrial
unionism —organizing all the workers of an industry into one union. The
Wobblies organized the unorganized and the dispossessed.
The Wobblies had serious weaknesses —they underestimated the
need for strong organization, downplayed political agitation and action, and
never developed an effective long-range strategy.
Although the Wobblies were never the chief force in the labor
movement, their influence was widespread. They participated in thousands
of strikes and actions and helped lead effective mass strikes in Lawrence,
Mass. in 1912, Patterson, N.J. in 1913, and Seattle, Wash, in 1919. The
Wobblies refused to sign labor contracts, always reserving the right to strike.
They advocated revolution and socialism, opposed imperialist war and made
great breakthroughs in work with immigrants, women and children. The
Wobblies were among the first organizers to recognize the importance of
explaining to the children of strikers" the political issues involved in the
strikes. Wobbly children's meetings helped in keeping families together
through the long and difficult strikes.
There were many immigrants among the masses of women who
now entered the factories. Often, the bosses placed women of different
nationalities next to one another on workbenches, hoping that language
barriers and cultural differences would hinder the possibility for unity.
Women worked as domestics, in the textile industries of New
England and New York, garment sweatshops, laundry and food services. In
1909 and 1910, the women shirtwaistmakers strikes erupted in New York
City. Sixty percent of the workers were women, 70% were between the ages
of 16 and 25. They worked 56 hours a week in dingy lofts. Women pushed
the corrupt male union leadership to support their demands for shorter
64
hours and decent working conditions. At one pre-strike meeting, Clara
Lemlich, a young organizer, interrupted the speeches of union officials to
decry the go-slow attitude and call for a strike. In the two months of the
strike, over one thousand strikers were arrested. The shirtwaistmaker's
militancy spurred the organizing of union shops throughout the entire
garment industry.
These early strikes confronted the Women's Suffrage Movement
with the importance of joining the life-and-death struggles of their working
sisters. In 1914, the Rockefeller -owned state militia burned a striking miners'
tent colony in Ludlow, Colorado, killing two women and thirteen children.
Thirty miners were shot down in the ensuing battle. Attica was not the first
massacre ordered by a Rockefeller. A suffrage leader named Elizabeth
Freeman led pickets against Rockefeller's Standard Oil offices in New York
to protest the Ludlow Massacre.
Strikes often stretched out for long months, involved desperate
hunger and want, loss of life and many times despair at crumbling fighting
strength. In these situations, family hardship is tremendous, and the strength
and fighting capacity of women and children become critical. Organizing
retaliation, strike support, food, medical help and supplies, fighting on the
picket lines, persuading scabs not to scab, and holding out, leading, persisting
have all been done by women. Women held special women's meetings in the
Lawrence and Patterson strikes. They opened up the struggle against the
lord-and-m aster attitude of many of the men, demanded that the full
burdens of housework and raising children be shared.
The official labor movements were worse than indifferent for the
most part. When textile workers and the women in the food industry were
first organized, it was at the initiative of the women themselves or of radical
left-wing organizers like the WobblJes.
There is a male monopoly on the decisive post of leadership in
traditional unions of women workers. Yet there are names to remember of
great women class fighters: Mother Jones, Ella Reeve Bloor, Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn, Kate Richards O'Hare, Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman,
Women organized and led other social and cultural movements
parallel to the labor struggles and the suffrage movement. Anti-lynching
crusades were waged by heroic Black women, with the sometimes-support of
suffragists and feminists. As summarized by Mary Church Terrell, "Lynching
is the aftermath of slavery." Between 1865-1895, over 10,000 Black men
were killed without trial. Pretexts for this reign of terror changed over time,
settling finally on avenging assaults on white Southern women. These cruel
rationales were challenged and repudiated by Ida B. Wells Barnett, a Black
journalist who for 40 years investigated each case of lynching and proved
that lynching was a systematic campaign of economic and political terror.
She was founder of the Negro Women's club movement and challenged white
women's organizations to take a stand against lynching. She later became a
founder, along with W.E.B. Du Bois, of the NAACP.
Women like jane Adams and Lillian Wald exposed and fought the
oppressive conditions in immigrant sectors of crowded cities. Women
agitated for decent health care, birth control, education and child labor laws.
65
-4
Racism as a prime social and cultural dividing line wag bom
in North America, out of slavery —it was born out of greed
for profit, perpetrated by deception and a monopoly of
firearms, not out of biological superiority real or imagined.
The notion that slavery is somehow based upon racial and
cultural inferiority of African and other Third World peoples
has been deeply embedded into every US institution as the
chief means of brainwashing and using the white population.
John Brown is an example to us of dedication, belief in
people's power to affect history and the willingness to risk
everything in the cause of liberation.
Reconstruction was one of the high points of overcoming
white supremacy and racism in our history. This is why it has
been written out of the history texts.
Internationalism —the commitment to unity in struggle with
other people in other lands against the common enemy— does
not spring automatically from a culture poisoned by slavery,
internal colonization and the slaughter of the native
population. It has to be fought for constantly.
68
The long struggle for women's suffrage was won in 1920. Women
organizers worked for almost one hundred years to gain the vote, in the
process transforming the consciousness of the whole country. They were
opposed every step of the way. Ineredible effort, militancy and patient
organizing were carried out decade after decade for (he basic recognition of
women's humanity and role in society.
The cost paid for this victory, however, was great. The suffrage
movement came to include open arguments for giving women the vote on
anti-immigrant grounds and in order to maintain a white majority (since
Black women would face disenfranchjsement in the South). Anti-foreign and
anti-Indian rationales were used by suffragists who posed the vote for
enlightened, church-going women against the spectre of the coarse vicious
and ignorant population of the slums. Sisters who knew better began saying
that the Black question and the question of women were not related.
Proposals from Black women urging fights against segregation were dismissed
as "outside issues." The pact between white supremacy in the South and
suffrage for women was scaled in 1903 on the issue of states' rights, when a
Women's Suffrage Convention decided that locals could decide on all policy
questions of membership. This insured that many suffrage associations were
segregated.
By 1913, at the March on Washington for Suffrage, Ida Wells
Barnett was asked not to march in the Illinois delegation, and at the final
hour, six thousand Black women who applied for membership in the
National Association of Women's Suffrage were told to wait because suffrage
was imminent.
While many other women activists were involved in the militant
social movements of the day, linking the oppression of women to a class
analysis of US society, the suffrage movement became trapped in a more and
more narrow fight for the vote. The victory, when it came, was rendered
hollow by the compromises with white supremacy that had been made along
the wav.
This is a familiar pattern in US radical history. Most US radicals
traditionally downplayed the Black revolution. "Problems of race" were seen
as secondary to the "real" class struggle of white workers. One of the earliest
unions, the National Labor Union, refused to organize Black workers.
Eugene V. Debs' American Railway Union barred Black people from
membership. The Socialist Party had segregated party cells in the South.
Racism in the US labor movement was seldom challenged by the left.
A test for all opposition movements came with the onset of World
War I. The First World War was a fight of rival imperialist powers for
colonics, investments, raw materials and world hegemony. Millions of people
died while the different governments experimented with germ warfare and
tested out new weapons systems. Although mosl of (be Socialist parties in
the Second International supported their own governments in the war,
there were major revolts against the war by workers, soldiers and poor
people. The Third International was formed by Lenin in 1919 in opposition
to the national chauvinism of the organized parties of the time. In the US,
many individual Wobblics actively opposed the war, although the IWW did
not take an active anti-war stance. Eugene V. Debs and other left-wing
socialists, William Z, Foster and other labor organizers, Jane Addams,
Jeanne tie Rankin and other women activists, all opposed the war.
69
The greatest event of the war years, as far as oppressed people were
concerned, was the vict ory of the Russian Revolution in 1 91 7.
Establishment of the world's first socialist revolution sent waves of energy
thru radical movements around the world. The IWW supported the
Bolsheviks. So did Seattle AFL longshoremen, who refused to load machine
guns headed for the US anti-Bolshevik expeditionary force in Siberia, It was
in this period that the Socialist Party split and the Communist Party formed.
The example of the Bolshevik Revolution was powerful —and the
capitalist fear of revolution was equally strong. The US government launched
a major campaign to crush the US left forces.
The Wobblies came under intensive state attack. Organizers in
Chicago were rounded up in 191 8, thrown into Cook County Jail to await a
conspiracy trial which then went on for months, Frank Little, a Native
American and prominent Wobbly organizer was lynched in Butte, Montana
in 1917 for his opposition to World War 1. He and Joe Hill, legally lynched
by the state of Utah in 1915, were martyrs in the Wobbly cause. The Palmer
Raids hit in 1920, J. Edgar Hoover headed the "radical squad" in the Justice
Department and made his reputation thru these raids. Ten thousand people
were rounded up and thrown in jail. Some were tortured, many like Emma
Goldman were deported. The government whipped up anti-red and
anti-immigrant hysteria -a climate which led to the frame-up and murder of
Sacco and Vanzetti a few years later.
The Wobblies were finally crushed. Beset by internal division and
lack of effective organization, they were unable to deal with the smashing
force of state repression. Some of their great leaders, like Big Bill Haywood,
were forced into exile.
Gompers and the AFL leadership joined in the anti-Bolshevik
campaign. They became the mouthpiece for the rulers, the labor wedge in
the onslaught against US leftists. "Americanism1' was once again the
watchword —the enemy was the immigrant, the Black, the Mexican, the
militant woman striker —all the forces of opposition. This is similar to
AFL-CIO President George Meany's "patriotic" attacks on the anti-war
movement during the Vietnam War.
Attacks on the left were aimed at defusing the revolutionary
. movement in the wake of the Russian Revolution, and also at ensuring that
US gains made during World War I could be consolidated. With its European
rivals badly battered from the war, the US tightened its hold on Latin
America and made aggressive moves toward China. The US entered a new era
as a major world power. While opposition continued (Debs drew one million
votes in the Presidential campaign of 1920), masses of people were mobilized
behind the goal of expanding the empire as the sure way to prosperity.
William Green, who succeeded Gompers as President of the AFL, argued that
strikes were no longer needed, that imperialism would bring the US working
class great economic henefits. This kind of opportunism and national
chauvinism within the US labor movement helped isolate the radical forces.
Parallel to these developments was a marked increase in terror
directed at the Black population. This was reflected in a wave of Iynchings,
organized attacks on Black communities, and the rapid growth of the Klan in
the post-World War I period.
Between 1910 and 1920, over 300,000 Black people had moved
70
North and begun life in the cities. For years, Northern industries had refused
to hire Black laborers, instead relying on the seemingly endless supply of
cheap immigrant labor. But with European immigration disrupted by the war
—and following on the heels of a severe depression in the cotton industry-
Northern labor agents came South to recruit Black workers.
Thousands of Black workers entered heavy industry. They worked
in auto, steel, ironworks and the railroads —at the toughest jobs, with the
least pay and no job security. This process began the trend, which is still
occurring today, of Black and Third World workers entering basic industry.
This has now markedly changed the racial composition of the working class
in these areas and has brought the Black liberation struggle to the industrial
center of the US.
Black men also joined the segregated armed forces. Over a third of
all US troops in Europe were Black. Returning home after the war, they
were often the target of racial attacks —and they fought back. This trend has
continued after every US war, as more and more Black men came home
armed and angry. The cities were tense places, as white mobs assaulted the
just-settling-in Black people. Black communities defended themselves with
arms in Chicago and Washington, D.C. In the Tulsa battle of 1921, the white
mayor ordered an aerial bombardment of the Black section of town. The
tenacity of the Black defenders temporarily turned back the white civilian
attacks.
It was under these conditions of Black people developing new
urban communities and defending them, combined with a race pride and
identification with African anti-colonial struggles, that the Garvey movement
grew strong and a Harlem renaissance of Black music and art flowered.
Marcus Garvey claimed a million members for his Universal Negro
Improvement Association. This movement expressed an upsurge of Black
consciousness of oppression as a colonized people. It also expressed a
well-grounded lack of faith in the reliability of white allies. Garvey set up a
steamship company and developed plans for an exodus to Africa. The
collapse of some of these projects combined with state repression of the
UNIA contributed to the organization's decline. But its spirit lived on, as
evidenced in Black nationalist movements of today.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION AND THE
COMMUNIST PARTY
The myth that the US economy was somehow headed for
continued prosperity outside the normal laws and cycles of capitalist
development was rudely shattered by the Great Depression which started in
1929. From the US, it rapidly spread to the rest of the capitalist world. Only
the socialist USSR remained untouched.
Production in the US fell to 60% of the previous year. At least
seventeen million people were out of jobs at the worst point —over one third
of the labor force. Piles of food, coffee, grain, beans were burned, dumped in
the ocean, or contaminated with fuel oil, to get them off the glutted market
and raise food prices, while millions went hungry. Small businesses were
71
ruined; teachers and professors were out on the street; farmers were forced
off their farms. On the breadlines, at the Red Cross offices, at relief centers,
city halls, state capitals, federal offices, the unemployed and the dispossessed
began to fight back.
Veterans marching to Washington, D.C., got beaten, gassed, and
thrown out of the city by troops commanded by General Douglas
MacArthur, on orders from President Herbert Hoover. The Communist
Party, along with the Unemployed Councils, led demonstrations and actions.
When evicted tenants had their furniture dumped on the street by order of
their landlords, members of the Unemployed Councils would organize and
haul the furniture back into the house, often past armed sheriffs and
deputies. The CP began to grow and train the organizers who later helped
establish the CIO. A major campaign for unemployment insurance was
launched, which in a few years led to the creation of the Social Security
System.
As industry began to recover, some workers were rehired, the
unemployed and students began to get jobs. Communists and other militant
organizers began a drive to transform the existing company unions in the
basic industries into real weapons of class struggle. Auto, steel, meat-packing,
maritime trades, lumber, food-processing, were major targets.
This became the period of sit-down strikes and other direct action
innovations. In Toledo, Ohio, workers and the unemployed together violated
a ban on mass picketing during the 1934 strike at Autohte. The 1934 West
Coast Maritime Workers' strike united several craft unions in defiance of
conservative AFL leaders. The police murder of two San Francisco strikers
during the first days of the strike touched off bloody battles in the city, and
resulted in the San Francisco general strike.
Black people were hit hardest by the depression. Between the start
of the depression and the onset of World War II, Blacks lost one third of
their jobs in industry, and most of their positions in the skilled trades. In
1940, unemployment rates for northern Black people were 133% higher than
for whites. In 1935, Black people in Harlem boycotted stores which refused
to hire Black workers. Their slogan was "Don't Buy, If You Can't Work."
This campaign led to a rebellion in Harlem in the summer of 1935 after a
Black youth was shot by store detectives in one of the affected stores.
In the South, Black sharecroppers engaged in major struggles some
of them jointly with poor white farmers. The Alabama Sharecroppers Union
helped organize the first series of protests against the Scottsboro Case, the
frameup of nine Southern Black men accused of raping two white women.
Meetings of the Sharecropper's Union had to be kept secret, for fear of
police terror. Ralph Gray, a Black leader of the group, was lynched by a
white mob during one of the sharecroppers struggles. The sharecropper
movement was the most significant upsurge in Black action and protest in
the South since Reconstruction days.
This was the era of the unorganized and unskilled —those workers
long excluded from the labor movement. Many of the striker; were women;
many were Black. Few were organized into AFL unions. The Congress of
Industrial Organizations (CIO), led by John L. Lewis, was formed in 1935,
for the purpose of "organizing the unorganized" in the major industries.
Communists were at the core of the CIO drives, Thev wer? ^reat union
organizers, and Lewis was realistic enough to rely on them to crack the
toughest anti-union strongholds.
72
In the next few years, the CIO campaigns won basic rights for
millions of workers. The CIO opened up its membership to Black people,
breaking the "whites only" practice of most AFL craft unions. 200,000
Black workers joined the CIO in the years preceding World War II. This was a
time of great unity and militancy, of life and death battles for the right to
organize and picket, for union recognition, decent pay, decent working
conditions, human dignity. The AFL hierarchy was pushed aside as the
masses of US workers took centerstage.
In 1936, workers at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan,
staged a forty-four day sitdown strike. This forced GM to grant union
recognition and also galvanized the working class throughout the nation. A
major victory was also won in 1937 in the fight to organize the steel
industry.
By the end of the Second World War, the CIO no longer played this
revolutionary role. Many CIO unions had enforced no-strike pledges against
their membership during the war; many CIO leaders, like Sidney Hillman of
the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, were functioning almost within the
Roosevelt administration. The CIO also had a Southern organizing
committee, but never organized in the South, It backed off from the task of
confronting white supremacy in Southern industry and accepted the
formation of Jim Crow unions.
Reflecting their own acceptance of the privileges and ethic of the
US empire, especially during the period of the World War II economic boom,
and pushed by state pressure and conservative leadership, many labor unions
lined up behind anti-Communism. At the 1946 CIO convention, Phillip
Murray —the President of the CIO— put the finishing touches on this
corruption by reading Communists out of the labor movement. Communists
and left-led unions were expelled from the CIO and finally the CIO merged
with the AFL. The AFL-CIO became an ardent defender of the Cold War,
and its national leadership now functions, for all intents and purposes, as an
arm of US imperialism. They no longer represent the unorganized, the poor
and the dispossessed.
Roosevelt granted some concessions to the labor movement in
order to save the system as a whole. The Wagner Act of 1 935 recognized the
rights of most workers to unionize. This was a victory, although the act left
out the militant Chicano farmworkers in the West, as well as most industries
employing large numbers of women. Roosevelt's aim was to use the power of
the labor movement as a wedge in convincing a sector of the ruling class that
state regulation of the capitalist system was needed to ensure stability.
Roosevelt also tried to ally with the labor leadership and bring it under the
wing of the US government. These were the strategic goals of the New Deal.
From the depression years until after the Second World Wrar, the
CPUS A was the main force of the organized left in the United States. The CP
was in the front lines of countless struggles of the unemployed, the
homeless, Southern Black sharecroppers, women textile workers -groups hit
hardest and most ready to fight. Around the CP flourished a cultural
upheaval; writers, painters, poets were mobilized into struggle and produced
a unique people's art.
The CP stressed the special importance of Black liberation. Black
people were recognized as an oppressed nation in the South (then called a
73
.\egro nation) with the right of self-determination, which white
revolutionaries were bound to support. This was a great breakthrough.
Communists engaged in persistent battles against white chauvinism and white
supremacy both within and outside the Party. CP organizers challenged
racism in the labor movement. The CP did active work in the Scottsboro
Case, making it a central part of Party work in the shops as well as in the
defense committees. Many Black people joined the Party in this period: the
Harlem branch was one of the biggest and most active; Black organizers were
among the most effective CP spokespeople.
Communists circulated work of Black scholars and did important
historical research themselves which uncovered Black and revolutionary
history, this was like a flash of light. They failed, however, to analyze the
culture of US empire-building within the oppressor nation, or to deal with it
in practice. This became a cause of the CP's eventual political bankruptcy.
In a great demonstration of international solidarity, Communists
joined the fight against fascism in Spain in 1935 —nearly 2,000 people
fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade there, and many gave their lives.
The center of the world struggle at this time was the battle to
defeat fascism. But the US government, along with those of Britain and
France, wanted Hitler to attack the Soviet Union and hopefully destroy it
before they would enter the war against Germany. The Western imperialist
powers had long isolated the Soviet Union, setting her up for >[azi attack. In
1936, Communist Parties around the world adopted the strategy of a United
Front Against Fascism. Communists everywhere were urged to unite with all
progressive forces in their respective countries to defeat fascism and protect
the Soviet Union.
In some countries like China, the United Front strategy was applied
effectively, with the Chinese Communists maintaining their own separate
identity, program and army. In the US, the CPUSA submerged its identity
within the CIO. It fought for economic gains, but did not keep alive a vision
of socialism and revolution. It stopped fighting its own imperialism. This is
opportunism. While concealment from union officials and company spies
was sometimes necessary in order to work and organize. Party members
retreated from doing open Communist organizing in their day-to-day work.
74
This made it easier for the CIO to denounce "hidden communists" in the
witchhunts after the war.
In 1941, when A. Phillip Randolph organized a march on
Washington for more Black jobs, the CP refused support in the name of the
war mobilization effort. This was correctly viewed as desertion by Black
people.
During the Second World War, the US and the Soviet Union were
allied in the fight against German and Japanese imperialism. This presented a
complex situation for the CPUSA. Its response was to abandon almost all its
opposition to US imperialism. It failed, for instance, to condemn the
imprisonment of Japanese families in concentration camps onthe West Coast.
It abandoned its position on the central nature of the Black liberation
struggle —with Earl Browder (the wartime leader of the Party) declaring that
Black people had chosen the path of integration. This was part of the CP's
betrayal of its revolutionary critique of imperialism: a new version of
American exceptionalism. Browder also declared that "the Age of
Imperialism has ended" in a speech at the end of World War II.
After the war, these CP policies were reversed for a while. Browder
was expelled from the Party. Bui the changes did not last. When Cold War
repression came, the CP found that its non-struggle direction could not be
reversed easily. The CP had lost its capacity to fight. Tens of thousands of
supporters and Party members deserted the struggle.
The CP retreated further into reform politics. It joined in the Soviet
denunciations of China, renounced revolutionary violence and began
supporting liberal Democrats.
It still has not done a full self-criticism of these positions or of the
mistakes of the forties and fifties. This means the CP has not changed in a
revolutionary way and the lesssons of struggle have not been passed on for
the future.
We have much to learn from the experience and wisdom
accumulated over the years by CP workers of that period. The CP in its early
history was a great advance in the US revolution. Its reversals and wrong
directions are defeats for us all —that is why the lessons must be drawn
sharply.
In the fifties the CP was hit head-on with a vicious campaign of
anti-communism and counter-revolution. Truman was consolidating a base
for imperial war, for a massive atomic arms race, for the invasion of Korea
-by hunting and terrorizing US Communists. It was then that Richard Nixon
began his political/criminal career with the Alger Hiss case. Smith Act trials
jailed the Party leadership; for not: cooperating with the McCarthy
investigations many Communists and progressives were expelled from trade
unions, lost teaching johs, went underground, and were tormented by the
FBI.
A bitter example of the US attack on internal opposition to the
Cold War was the frameup and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in
the Atom Spy case. Their murder, at the hands of the Eisenhower/Nixon
government, was committed after a trial in which their socialist beliefs,
anti-fascist stands, and refusal to falsely inform on friends were used as proof
of conspiracy to steal the non-existent "A-bomb secret." Hundreds of
thousands of people around the world stood vigil on the night of the
execution. The assassination of the Rosenbergs was meant to silence all
75
opposition to US imperialism.
The truth about the Rosenbergs is jusi today being understood
-another step on the long march toward exposing the unmes of this empire
and uncovering the truth about our own past.
«qrp! Qfp, pH^Vj
76
r?
L
When you deal with the past, you're dealing with history, |
youVe dealing actually with the origin of a thing. When you
know the origin, you know the cause. If you don't know the
origin, you don't know the cause. And if you don't know the
cause, you don't know the reason, youVe just cut off, you're
left standing in mid-air. So the past deals with history or the
origin of anything —the origin of a person, the origin of a
nation, the origin of an incident. And when you know the
origin, then you have a better understanding of the causes
that produce whatever originated there and its reason for
originating and its reason for being. It's impossible for you
and me to have a balanced mind in this society without going
into the past, because in this particular society as we function
and fit into it right now, we're such an underdog, we're
trampled upon, we're looked on as almost nothing.
Malcolm X
77
k
We wul simply say that imperialism can be defined as the
worldwide expression of the search for profits and the
ever-increasing accumulation of surplus value by monopoly
financial capital, centered in Europe, and then in North
America. And if we wish to place the fact of imperialism
within the general trajectory of the evolution of the
transcendental far-ranging factor which has changed the face
of the world —capital and the process of its accumulation—
we can say that imperialism is piracy transplanted from the
seas to dry land, piracy reorganized, consolidated, and
adapted to the aim of exploiting the natural and human
resources of our peoples. But if we can calmly analyze the
imperialist phenomenon, we will not shock anybody by
admitting that imperialism —which everything points to as
being the last stage of capitalism —was a historical necessity,
a consequence of the development of the productive forces
and of the transformation of the methods of production in
the general contour of humanity as a whole in movement. A
necessity, just as the national liberation of the peoples, the
destruction of capitalism, and the arrival of socialism are at
present,
Amilcar Cabral
78
IV. IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS:
THE THIRD WORLD
US imperialism is the greatest destroyer of human life on earth. It is
; whole: an economic, political, and cultural system. It feeds on piracy of
:he Third World. It colonizes Black and Third World people within the US
.ind divides, exploits, rapes and attempts to huy off poor and working
people. Because of imperialism people live in shanty-towns in Saigon and Rio
-■£ Janeiro. The same system is responsible for the sub-standard conditions
;f one quarter of the housing in this country. US imperialism is a parasite on
the Third World, and traps us in a culture of waste and death. For the
benefit of imperialism we live in a society either at war or producing and
preparing for war all the time.
Imperialism has its origin in the necessity for capitalism to expand
:r face stagnation. Imperialism is therefore the defining characteristic of
modern capitalism as a whole. Its penetration into the Third World produces
"he conditions which give rise to movements for national liberation and
socialism. It is precisely because this expansion is necessary that national
Liberation movements are a vital blow to imperialism.
Imperialism is on the defensive today. Wherever people reclaim
zontrol over their lives and their nation's wealth, it removes another brick
rrom imperialism's foundation.
79
MONOPOLY CAPITAL
US imperialism is a stage in the development of capitalism -the
monopoly stage.
Long before the present age of monopoly, capitalism was born out
of the trade and commerce and empire building of the medieval world. The
industrial revolutions of Europe and North America had their roots in the
subjugation and looting of Africa, India, and the Americas.
In the US the end of the Civil War began a tremendous boom in
industry in the North. The years between 1880 and 1900 —in Britain,
France, and Germany as well as here — marked the transition from
Competitive capitalism to the concentration of industry and finance in the
hands of a few financiers and huge industrial corporations. By the turn of
the century, the most basic industries were monopolized —energy, railroads,
machinery, steel. The power of the hanks and financiers grew to finance
modernization and expansion.
The capitalist countries fought for control of the world in a series
of long and costly colonial wars. The people of Africa, Asia and Latin
America resisted. But eventually, skillful manipulations of divisions among
the people, combined with the battleships and machine-guns of the industrial
nations, prevailed over the colonies. Africa was divided up among the
European countries in 1886; in Asia, France controlled Indochina while the
European powers tried to divide up China; England dominated the
subcontinent of India. The US, having already seized North America from
the Indians and Mexico, and staked out its claim to Latin America in the
Monroe Doctrine, proceeded to grab Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines
from the weakened Spanish empire, began frequent military interventions
into Latin America and attempted to penetrate China thru the Open Door
policy.
The laws of capitalist competition, expand or perish, did not cease
to operate with the triumph of monopolistic finance capital. Actually the
competition was reproduced on a bigger scale and at a much greater level of
tension and conflict. Modern arms and technology, thought-control and
social engineering, try to disguise the facts of oppression behind the mask of
neo-colonialism. Nevertheless, conquest and domination have become more
devastating, and even more enormously profitable.
What causes this drive for colonial conquest and empire ?
—Large companies are more efficient in exploiting labor because
they are able to use their great accumulation of capital in developing
technology. This leads to producing much more than can be sold
domestically at a profit, since the workers can never be paid enough to buy
back the product of their labor. This "crisis of overproduction" is inherent
to capitalism at all stages, but intensified under monopoly capitalism. New
markets must be found and new areas for investment of idle capital.
—Colonized nations hold the promise of labor at starvation wages,
unorganized and easily available. The monopolist goes in search of new
sources of cheap raw materials in the Third World.
—The profits of monopoly capital are so enormous that the supply
of capital outstrips the profitable investment opportunities in the US. This
80
capital is invested in other capitalist countries, but most profitable are
investments in colonies. Whole factories and branches of industry are now
exported to the Third World.
-A by-product of the huge profits reaped from the Third World is
the strategy (and ability) to create labor peace domestically by buying off a
privileged strata of the US working people, reaching even into large sectors
of the industrial proletariat.
By the 20th century, capitalism had reached the stage of modern
imperialism; since the US is always competing with other imperialist nations
for power, control of the Third World is not only an economic necessity, but
also a political and military necessity.
IMPERIALISM MEANS UNDERDEVELOPMENT
The condition for the massive development of one sector of the
imperialist system —the oppressor nation— is the systematic and violent
underdevelopment of the other— the colonies and neocolonies of the Third
World. The wealth of one is a product of the impoverishment of the other.
This has involved nothing less than an unparalleled looting of the labor,
resources and cultures of the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America by
the imperial powers.
This begins with the very first expansions of early capitalism. For
example, when the British entered India in force, the primitive textile
industry of each country was at a similar stage of development. The British
deliberately wrecked the Indian textile industry to force India to import
British textiles. Vast amounts of Indian feudal wealth were stolenin orderto
provide what Marx called the "primitive accumulation of capital" in
81
England. Indian food agriculture was destroyed to make way for cash crops
and raw materials needed for British industry. By the late 18th century, the
result was the first mass famine in India. In England, the imperialists justified
their rule as necessary to care for the "backward and ignorant" Indians.
Rudyard Kipling and other imperial writers built elaborate justifications for
British Empire which rallied generations of English people.
In Cuba, when the people lived under US neocolonial control, the
entire life of the island was based on the sugar plantation system. People
worked three months and spent nine months unemployed. No other
industries were allowed to develop. This gave the sugar companies a ready
supply of cheap labor, since the alternative for the Cuban worker was no
work at all.
The most modern form of forced underdevelopment can be seen in
the workings of the multinational corporations in the Third World.
The rise of the multinationals can be traced, in large part, to the
post World War II growth of US empire. Over 200 US-based corporations
could now be characterized as multinationals —that is, major corporations
having headquarters in one country and a number of subsidiaries in other
countries.
The multinationals have attempted to cultivate a liberal image. The
Polaroid Corporation, for example, has defended its heavy investments in
South African apartheid as the "Polaroid experiment." Polaroid claims that
it pays higher wages to South African workers than local South African
industry does. But this hides the crucial point: while the multinationals, with
their enormous amount of capital, research and development facilities and
highly-organized sales apparatus, can pay workers a bit more, the profits
they extract from this labor are even more staggering. Salvadore Allende
pointed this out in his December, 1972 speech before the U.N. Describing
workings of the two US-based multinational companies, Anaconda and
Kennecott, he said:
These enterprises exploited Chile's copper for many years; in
the last 42 years alone taking out more than $4,000 million
in profits although their initial investments were no more
than $ 30 million. In striking contrast, let me give one simple
and painful example of what this means to Chile. In my
country there are 600,000 children who will never be able to
enjoy life in a normal, human way because during the first
eight months of life they did not receive the minimum
amount of protein. Four thousand million dollars would
completely transform Chile. A small part of that sum would
ensure protein for all time for all children of my country.
By controlling the copper industry, Kennecott and Anaconda were
able to determine how much copper would be mined and what price it
would be sold for. Since copper exports account for 80% of the total value
of Chilean exports, these multinationals had the Chilean economy in their
greedy grasp.
The multinationals would sell raw copper to their own subsidiaries
82
in the US well below the world market price; in return, these subsidiaries
would smelt the copper ore and sell the refined product at the going market
price. Profits were thus maximized in the US —and minimized in Chile..
Before the Popular Unity government nationalized the copper mines in
1971, no Chilean government could even raise the taxes on these
corporations, let alone influence their production policies. Any attempts in
this direction were met by Kennecott and Anaconda with cutbacks in
production and wholesale, layoffs of copper workers.
At the same time, the multinationals were able to pay Chilean
copper workers higher wages than most other Chilean industries. They used
this to attempt to create a labor aristocracy in Chile, a force to oppose the
interests of other Chilean workers. AFL-CIO organizers were sent in by the
US to help organize anti-communist unions.
Some of the methods by which imperialism creates
underdevelopment in the Third World can be summarized as follows:
—The labor of Third World people has been stolen through slavery,
super-exploited at low wages, and channeled into production meant to
benefit the oppressor nation. Profits are drained from the Third World.
Where reinvestment takes place within the oppressed nation, the priorities of
the corporate powers determine where it will go.
—The natural resources and raw materials of Third World countries
have been expropriated by the imperialist powers, particularly the US. The
recent actions of the oil-producing countries and the copper-producing
countries are important attempts by Third World nations to wrest back
control of these resources, and with them, of their own destinies.
—Diversification of industry, real progress and rational economic
growth arc prevented by imperialism. Where industriahzation is allowed to
occur, control remains firmly in imperialist hands and, most often,
consumer-oriented industries are pushed rather than agriculture or heavy
industry. This keeps the ''developing" country dependent on imperialist
technology and aid.
83
-Often cash crops —like sugar and coffee— are cultivated at the
expense of agricultural production which could feed the people. This is a
main cause of famine and malnutrition in the world. Coffee alone is the
primary economic life-blood of ten underdeveloped countries.
This exploitation is maintained only through force and violence.
Corporations like Kennecott,ITT,Polaroid and Exxon rely on state violence to
insure their investments and continued profits.
Most simply, imperialism means super -profits for US corporations
at the expense of human lives and possibilities in the Third World.
IMPERIALISM MEANS RACISM AND GENOCIDE
Imperialism has intensified and spread worldwide the most virulent
racist practices and ideology. Racism is built into US imperialism and
imperial culture feeds on and creates racism. Racism is institutionalized as a
system of control and containment, necessary to enforce the exploitation
and oppression of colonized people. In the Third World, racism takes the
form of cultural warfare, the displacement of populations and genocide.
Imperialism perpetrates a mythology of biological and cultural
inferiority. As W.E.B. DuBois describes it:
The white race was pictured as "pure" and "superior"; the
Black race as dirty, stupid and inevitably inferior; the yellow
race as sharing in deception and cowardice . . , everything
great, everything fine, everything really successful in human
culture was white.
Imperial control aims at the thorough domination and humiliation
of the subjugated. Ruthless suppression of the oppressed has as its other side
the practice of treating colonized women and men as children, attacking
their integrity and dignity, enforcing dependency with the underlying threat
of superior force.
Imperialism systematically subverts peoples' history and culture
-social forms, language, art, respect for old people- everything that
identifies a person in society. As with the economy, imperialist penetration
cuts off the growth of the culture. It distorts the historical development of
the oppressed people. The old culture is used to imprison the people and
adapt them to imperialism's needs. As Fanon points out, the goal is rather a
continued agony than the total disappearance of the pre-existing cultures.
The displacement of whole populations is another racist weapon of
imperialism. The Bantustans of South Africa, for example, comprisingl3% of
South African territory, are "reserved" for the African population who are
uprooted and forcibly removed to these poor quality lands. This is enforced
by a rigid Polaroid-provided I.D. pass system. The Bantustans are guarded by
white South African troops. From them, African men are recruited as a labor
pool for the mines and factories, while women are forced into prostitution in
order to survive.
84
Another example of the violent displacement of a whole population
is the complete, destruction by automated war of the society of Lao people
in the Plain of jars. Every day for five years the US carried out secret air war
to destroy the social and economic infrastructure of areas governed by the
Pathet Lao. The people of the Plain of Jars -with a 700-year recorded
history— retreated to caves and dugout, tunnels as hamlets were razed and
the land made barren. Finally, under massive attack, the youth of the Plain
retreated with the Pathet Lao and the remaining people were forcibly placed
in refugee camps or aiirlified to Vientiane to become peddlers, waitresses,
maids and coolies, from 1964 io 1969 over one million Laotians were kiUed,
wounded or made homeless by an officially denied air war.
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The final weapon of racist warfare is genocide: the systematic
destruction of a people, their means of subsistence and future generations.
Today, the native Indian people of Brazil are being decimated by US
industry and Brazilian government expansion into the Amazon basin regions.
These tribal people arc" forced off their land, killed by raids and whiteman's
diseases, and pacified by government programs, their cultures destroyed. It
has been charged that 100,000 Indians are being eliminated. The US
government user] genocidal weapons against the people of Vietnam: chemical
and biological substances it had agreed to outlaw, which burn the flesh,
cripple future generations, and obliterate growth on the land. This was
intended to break the Vietnamese and to be an example to other oppressed
people.
85
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Even in the face of this terrible suffering the people resist. The
culture of the colonized people survives reservations, epidemics, air war,
near -genocide. The culture changes, takes on new forms to meet the changed
conditions, as Black people transformed the church into a unifying center
during slavery. Colonialism is not able to destroy the strong basis of the
national culture. The people themselves embody it, preserve it, carry it and
hand it down through generations. Imperialism encourages the rejection of
the national culture and adoption of the garb and forms of the imperial
culture. The neocolonial bourgcoisc which is created by imperialism often
"passes" into the culture of the imperialists. But Lhe people's culture does
not die out. It lies hidden in secret practices and in the memory of the
people until the opportunity and necessity for struggle calls it into life. In
the people's culture lie the seeds of resistance and rebellion.
Movements for national liberation are often born with a popular
rejection of imperial culture and a renaissance of culture of the colonized
peoples: the culture contains (he basis on which unity is built. The
movement to reclaim and take pride in national culture gives vitality, spirit
and fierceness to the political movement. This is a rejection and defeat of the
racist tactics of imperialism.
Racism is imperialism's most deadly weapon for brainwashing,
controlling and mobilizing the LIS population in support of wars of
conquest. As Fanon says. "Racism bloats and disfigures the face of the
culture that practices it." The imperialists create racial identification with
one's oppressors among the domestic white population in support of wars of
conquest. They also draw on xenophobia and national chauvinism.
Racism is the chief justification for US expansion and colonial
ventures. The imperial army has been rallied with vile epithets since "the
only good Indian is a dead Indian" and led into conquest by men like Teddy
86
Roosevelt who boasted of "killing rabbits" in the war against Puerto Rico in
1898. Racism is at the root of US unconcern about the indiscriminate
murder of civilians that is the horrible face of the war in Indochina. To
William Calley and the perpetrators of the My Lai war crimes the unarmed
Vietnamese villagers including the children were the faceless and nonhuman
"enemy."
IMPERIALISM MEANS SEXISM
The systematic domination of women is an underpinning of
imperialism: under imperialism, the organization and fabric of society —the
family, production, reproduction, and all social relations— keep women
dependent and powerless. Sexism is this institutionalized and encouraged
system of control. In the Third World, imperialism imposes the most brutal
forms of modern sexism. Women are murdered/tortured, sterilized/raped,
stifled/ crippled , owned/exploited under the banner of male supremacy.
Imperialism fosters the most reactionary (backward) aspects in
feudal and colonized nations, including male supremacy. The more humane
aspects are suppressed. Thus, for women in the Third World, the most
oppressive aspects of both imperialism and the former society are fused and
intensified. Imperialism maintains and heightens the oppression of women
on a global scale.
Imperiahsm lays claim to all the natural resources of the colonized
society, including the women. They are valued and controlled as laborers,
breeders, and sexual commodities.
Women are cut from the economic lifeline. Where imperialism
causes rapid and forced urbanization, women are uprooted into unfamiliar
cities where there is no economic activity for them -forced to be dependent
on men. Sex segregation in the work force is encouraged by the imperialists.
For example, in Africa, the European colonizers taught and recruited only
men to use technology and to work in their factories. Women were excluded
from the "modern economy." If the woman is iefl behind to do field labor
or work on a coffee or rubber plantation, she is also kept at the edge of
subsistence, subject to an economy based on imperial needs and disruptions,
where the traditional agriculture has been destroyed.
The reproductive power of Third World women is under direct
attack by the imperialists. Population control and forced sterilization is now
a major US strategy directed against Third World people. These massive
programs are intended to prevent social upheaval by restricting population in
the underdeveloped world. They have disarmed many because these
programs masquerade as concern for the poor peoples of the world —just like
foreign aid and military protection.
Who is behind these programs? "Family planning" for Third World
women is being pushed by Rockefeller, the Ford Foundation, Kissinger,
International Planned Parenthood Foundation, Protestant missionaries, and
academic apologists. US agencies in the Third Wrorld have made sterilization
and forced birth control programs a requirement for receiving foreign aid
87
money. These programs concentrate in Latin America, parts of Africa and
India and Indonesia. By 1965, 34% of all women of child-bearing age in
Puerto Rico had been sterilized. Sterilization and IUDs are carried to the
villages of Bolivia, Guatemala and Haiti. Women are offered a lipstick or
$1.50 to be sterilized. Population control has its counterparts within the US:
Third World women in particular are sterilized without their consent.
This is not the first time imperialist strategy aimed at the control of
reproduction. In 1945, Congress almost passed a bill to sterilize all the
Japanese women in concentration camps within the US. This motion was
defeated by one vote.
The same men who are responsible for US policy in Vietnam say
that overpopulation creates social unrest and revolution. They claim that
population control is their strategy for hunger. But such a strategy will
eliminate neither hunger nor social unrest and revolution. People are not the
problem. Injustice, the conditions caused by US imperialism, create
revolution. So does the lack of power over our lives and the future of our
children.
Women want decent birth control. Women want the choice to
control our own reproduction. Instead, birth control has become a weapon
of empire —Third World women are used as guinea-pigs for testing and
experimentation. Instead, we get coils and pills and sterilizations under
threat of losing aid or a few crumbs of welfare. This kind of coercion, for
economic and racist reasons, constitutes forced sterilization. It is a direct
form of genocide against the future, through the bodies of women.
Imperialism enforces a systematic terror against women. The
staggering number of rapes of Vietnamese women of all ages by US soldiers,
taken together, draws a picture of the intimate relationship of violence and
sex under imperialism. Rape and sexual abuse is the prerogative of the
conqueror, a means of undermining women's resistance, a murderous assault,
part of the arsenal of control and domination. The rape of Black slave
women is one of this country's major crimes. White men claimed the right to
rape Black women, and any attempt to defend a Black woman meant death
by the lynch rope. Signs of a deep love relationship between slaves led to one
of them being sold; mothers and children were systematically separated.
The invader attempts to "possess" and degrade the colonized
woman and, thru her, to assault the entire culture. Wherever US imperialism
goes, its tourism and its armies produce mass prostitution: Havana
{pre-1959), Manila, Saigon, Bangkok, San Juan. Women are used as sexua!
objects and discarded. There are nearly 500,000 women in prostitution in
South Vietman, leading masses of women to drugs and suicide. There arc
more brothels than schools. In 1969, there were 214 agencies which
recruited young women from the provinces for 21,000 brothels, bars, and
hotels. Operations to conform Vietnamese women to American standards of
beauty became big business —women's breasts were enlarged and their eyes
rounded.
In US-built prisons in the Third World, women are tortured with
the special methods developed by the CIA, AID, and the "International
Association of Chiefs of Police. There are over 100,000 women in South
Vietnamese prisons, thousands in Brazil and Uruguay. They are tortured by
electric shock, beatings, drugs and sexual violence.
Women have begun to transform their lives by participation in
88
national Hbcrahon iniivvrticiit. fhroughoul. the Third World. In striking
opposihon f.o their condii.ions under imperial and reactionary societies,
women are over! brewing Elielr oppressors and creating condition? of dignity.
equality and unity, Vi ^mea have become organizers, heroines, and leaders in
liberation struggles , . . h t'i d imder socialism. Thev arc organizing (.he masses
of women ii; {heir counlrit'*. They are opposing backward superstitions.
patriarchal family rein (ionships, polygamy, bound feet, and traditions based
on the inferiority of m omen. \\ omen are armed, fighting imperialism.
building long-haired armies and women's milil.ias, defending the new
soeiehes tney ;ire nciping i.o build. They arc working, learning to read,
organizing heait
and divorce la >,*.
''.i*rc and child care. They are implementing new marriage
n-i. :iL\ie;iee> around birth control beneficial to all women.
Imperialism nan lis origin in the necessity for capitalism E.o
expand or face stagnation. Imperialism is therefore the
defining characteristic of smidern capitalism as a whole. Its
pe- net ration inio the Third World produces the conditions
which give rise la movements for national liberation and
socialism, .U is precisely because this expansion is necessary
Ehel uslifirial liberation movements are a vital blow to
irritseriaiism.
ImpeviaSism is on Ike defensive today. Wherever people
reclaim control over their Jives mui their nation's wealth, \l
removes another brick from imperialism's foundation.
89
Sexism is a cornerstone of imperialism's power to organize the
population in its home base. Competition, sex and violence are unified by
imperial culture and forged into a weapon against women. In the process of
humiliating and dominating women, men are mobilized to be the enforcers.
Sexism, like racism, is pushed to the level of fanaticism to justify an
otherwise naked grab for wealth and pbwer, and to try to ensure the loyalty
of the imperial army. GI's are promised manhood and glory. Proof of
manhood and sexual prowess is built around the weakness of women. Men
are rallied to kill and not care. An army training cadence goes like this:
• This is my rifle (holding up his Ml 6)
• This is my gun (hand at crotch)
• One is for killing
• The other for fun
Our movement must be involved in the fight against the domination
and torture of our sisters in the Third World. We have a common enemy. The
greatest male supremacists are the leading imperialists. They are Rockefeller,
Moynihan, Kissinger. We cannot betray the struggle of women in general and
our Third World sisters in particular. When we embrace these struggles as our
own —and merge them with our own— we create a basis for revolutionary
sisterhood and an international women's movement against imperialism.
NEOCOLONIALISM
The US has practiced neocolonialism for over 70 years in Latin
America. But in the context of rising Third World nationalism after World
War II, it became the main form of US world control. Neocolonialism
removes the most glaring symbol of the subordination of the colonized, the
colonial government. It grants formal political independence. At the same
time, it attempts to guarantee continued dominance thru economic, military
and cultural penetration.
Neocolonial economies are subordinated to the demands of the
imperialists. By the sheer scale of invested capital, multinational
corporations ean mold these economies to fit corporate needs.
Neocolonialism trains and supports a bourgeoisie within the
colonized country —not a capitalist class comparable to the one in the
oppressor nations, but a class in service to and totally dependent on the
imperial force which sustains it. The bastions of traditional strength such as
landlords in Latin America are manipulated and strengthened. Necolonialism
relies on reactionary and militaristic forces as a bulwark against social
demands from the people, and plunges the vast majority into greater
poverty.
90
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DEFEATS FOR NEOCOLONIALISM
While neocolonialism is a brutal system, it contains inherent
weaknesses and instability. The battles for political independence in the
Third World over the last 25 years have been transforming ones, and have
brought oppressed people a new sense of dignity and power. With
independence came many hopes for a better life -something which
neocolonialism has not provided. These popular measures have in the past
forced elected governments like Goulart in Brazil or Bosch in the
Dominican Republic to break with the various forms of US domination.
The most serious death-blow dealt neocolonialism in Latin America
was the overthrow of the Batista regime in 1959 and the successful Cuban
Revolution. From the landing of the Granma to the Bay of Pigs to the
building and defense of socialism today, Fidel Castro has been the heroic and
wise revolutionary leading the fight. The "first free territory of the
Americas" has been a continuing inspiration to the people of Latin America
and the US.
The Cuban Revolution, the only socialist revolution in our
hemisphere, has grown and consolidated forfifteen years.The revolution has
transformed people's daily lives, eliminating the scourges of the Latin
American continent: illiteracy, staggering rates of infant mortality and
epidemic diseases, mass hunger and malnutrition, inadequate housing and
unemployment. It has created popular forms of organizing revolutionary
justice, taking care of people's neighborhoods and communities, and more
recently, building a worker's movement to deepen mass participation at all
levels of decision-making connected with work. The revolution has launched
an offensive to transform education and culture into powerful revolutionary
tools.
91
Cuba is a beacon for everyone in its principled and dedicated
support for international revolution; Cuba has made terrific sacrifices to aid
other struggles. Cuba's heartfelt support for Vietnam is unmatched
anywhere. In Cuba, the whole people mobilized to produce for the
Vietnamese, and volunteered to go and fight if needed. Cuba's unwavering
defiance of Yanqui imperialism has encouraged other Latin American
nations to confront US neocolonial policy and has been exemplary for other
Latin American movements of national liberation. US revolutionaries have a
special responsibility to defend the Cuban Revolution and recognize its
decisive importance to the revolutionary struggle in the Americas. We
support the Cuban Revolution,
The US response to any challenge to its rule has always been savage.
In 1961 , the imperialist Bay of Pigs invasion was turned back by the Cuban
people, but the US has never ceased in its attemtps to arm and build a
para-military force to hurl against Cuba. The US-enforced blockade around
Cuba as well as the boycott of Cuban sugar are the major attempts to
destroy the revolution thru economic aggression which must be opposed and
defeated by our movement. Repeated US-backed plots to assassinate Premier
Fidel Castro by the participants and forces involved in Watergate have been
foiled.
VIOLENT COUNTERREVOLUTION
Throughout Latin America the old neocolonial facades of
"democratic alternatives'1 to communism have been overthrown, to be
replaced by openly fascist dictatorships: Banzer in Bolivia, Pinochet in Chile,
the junta in Brazil, Bordaberry in Uruguay. These counterrevolutions are the
work of the Nixon -Kissinger Doctrine. The Nixon-Kissinger Doctrine means
the export of fascism to the Third World. Its theme is that the US will arm,
train, finance and support counterrevolution and reaction without
necessarily intervening directly with ground troops in every area in which its
interests are threatened. The price of the Vietnam War was too high to pay
again and again. This strategy has the broad backing of the ruling class and is
not affected by governmental crisis, domestic differences or Watergate,
Neocolonialism and the Nixon-Kissinger Doctrine are ultimately
based on violence. The US has the most colossal military establishemt the
world has ever seen. Over 3000 bases encircle the globe, B-SS's are always in
the air, and a frightening nuclear arsenal stands ready. There are 600,000 US
troops stationed abroad, even when the US is not engaged in a war. This is
the ultimate threat behind each policy.
The US has been building a strong network of imperialist alliances
linking Western Europe and Japan with a series of fascist governments,
reactionary "junior partners" in imperialism. Thieu, the Greek junta, the
Brazilian dictators, Lon Nol, the Shah of Iran, the governments of Rhodesia
and South Africa are all US-backed regimes, armed against insurgents in their
own countries, set up to police their respective regions. In Africa the US has
increased support to Portugal, in the Mideast the US arms Israel and Jordan,
in Latin America the US and Brazil have backed fascist coups in Bolivia,
Uruguay and now Chile. In no way is neocolonialism a more liberal or
enlightened or peaceful system of domination. Neocolonialism is
Vietnamization on a world-wide scale.
92
V
19204922
China
1866
IB94-I89S
1898-1899
1900
191!
S^< 1912194]
*^J Philippine
ISM 1901
Souihettt
Alia
19$*— >
Korta
1871
1091- 189*
1901.1 90S
1950-1953
]920
1924
1925
1926
1927
l^nawaii
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iaao
1893
ARMED AMERICAN INTERVENTIONS ABROAD 1865 — Prraent
Mexi<
lesii
1870
1973
1B76
1913
1914.1917
1918-1919 l*ualemal*
1920
Honduras
1903
Nicaragua
189+
1896
1898
1899
1910
1912.1915
1926-1933
1907
1911
1911
1919
1914
1 915
• Si
IMS-)
1
(World Wor* or* not included)
Neocolonialism does not resolve the conflicts within imperialism; it
only pushes the struggle to a new stage. To revolutionaries in the Third
World, it has made even clearer the necessity to carry the struggle to its final
conclusion.
What does national liberation mean in the world today ?
Amilcar Cahral provides a clear formulation:
The liberation struggle is a revolution ... it does not finish at
the moment when the national flag is raised and the national
anthem played. A nation's national liberation is the recovery
of the historical personality of that nation . . . National
liberation exists when, and only when, the national
productive forces are completely freed of aU kinds of foreign
domination.
Cabral spoke as an African revolutionary who had watched African
independence turn into its opposite under neeolonialism. He argued that the
immediate enemy of the people of Guine-Bissau was Portugal, hut that the
fight was against neocolonialism as well.
We support progressive nationalist, policies or action wrhich weaken
the US empire, like Peru's nationalization of the Exxon and Cerro
corporations and the Arab oil boycott. These developments are in opposition
to imperialism. However, the movements we look to for leadership are those
which fight for the complete freedom of the historical and productive forces
from foreign domination, controlled by and for the masses of the country.
CHANGES IN WORLD POLITICS
Since the ceasefire in Vietnam the center of world conflict is not so
clearly focused. Many contradictions are coming to the fore. The
contradiction between the Soviet l.nion and China is deepening. We arc
studying these issues and offer the following points:
— National liberation movements and the socialist nations of the
Third World are today at the center of world history, providing concrete
leadership and inspiration to the world struggle. They are faced with the
awesome responsibility of consolidating their victories and advancing in the
face of predatory designs of US imperialism. They have the right to full
self-determination; this includes the right to take aid from anyone. They
are the best judges of their own needs and the realities of building socialism.
The Soviet Union has given substantial aid to liberation movements
and to socialist countries like Cuba and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam
(DRV). Soviet military aid to the Vietnamese was put to the best possible
use — shooting down I.S bomber planes.
It is national chauvinism for US revolutionaries to attack a socialist
country like Cuba for accepting Soviet aid. The same attack has been made
in the past on the DRV, These "left-sounding" positions display arrogance
toward the struggles of Third World nations.
94
— The Chinese Revolution is a wonderful development in the
advance of humanity. Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party have
made many important breakthroughs in developing revolutionary strategy in
the semi-feudal, semi-colonial world. The thought common to Mao and Ho
Chi Minh —that the central revolutionary force of our time is the oppressed
nations and peoples of the world leading the liberation struggle against
imperialism— is the guiding strategic principle of this era.
The Chinese have followed a popularly-based revolutionary course,
educating and involving hundreds of millions of people in discussion and
decisions about the economic and political direction of their country. The
Chinese have also warred on their own bureaucracy. By launching the
Cultural Revolution in 1966, they found a way to combat the rebirth of an
exploitative class in China. The Chinese example of continuing the class
struggle within socialist society has revolutionized people's vision of the
possibilities of socialism.
China, a poor country, has given important political and material
assistance to the Vietnamese. In 1950, Chinese volunteers joined the people
of Korea to halt the US invasion. China is now helping Tanzania and Zambia
build the Great Uhuru railroad, a big step in freeing Southern Africa from
dependence on the transport system of the racist governments in Rhodesia
and Mozambique.
— The policy of the government of the USSR, reflected in its
ideological stands as well as its state practice, contains conflicting tendencies.
While aiding many liberation movements, it has , since Krushchev's 20th
Party Congress speech in 1956, put forward the revisionist line !hat
"peaceful transition to socialism" is the correct path to revolution. This has
been an argument against taking up arms to fight and has forced
revolutionaries around the world, including ourselves, to break sharply with
Communist Parties which adopted this line.
— Nixon and Kissinger have used detente as a public relations device
to mystify the US people about their real intentions. Their rhetoric about
"peace" in the Mideast went hand-in-hand with issuing a worldwide military
alert which horrified people around the globe. Nixon used his trips to the
Soviet Union and China, coming at the time of the massive bombardments of
the DRV, to attempt to undermine the Vietnamese resistance. Nixon's Lack
of success should not obscure his purpose.
Revolutionaries everywhere work for world peace and oppose
nuclear war. This is a question of particular concern to the US movement ,
since the US is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons The
devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a chilling reminder of the tragic
consequences of nuclear weapons in the hands of the imperialists.
Revolutionaries in the US have as our main enemy US imperialism.
Defeating this enemy will require a lot of work —and is the unique
contribution we can make to the world revolution.
95
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THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES
Let's look at three areas which have been major focal points of
world struggle recently: Puerto Rico, Guine-Bissau and the Palestinian
liberation movement. Each is different; they each involve the full complexity
and diversity" of the struggle for national liberation.
PUERTO RICO
On December 14, 1973. the U.N. General A ssembly
overwhelmingly passed (lie report of the U.N. Special Committee on
Decolonization. This resolution buries the US claim that it has no colonics.
It reaffirms the "inalienable right of the people of Puerto Rico to
self-determination and independence. "
Puerto Rico became a US colony in 1898. after years of Spanish
rule. Its people have a proud hislory of resistance —from E! Grif.o de Lares,
the great 1868 rebellion again?! Spain, to the .Nationalist uprisings in the
1930's and 1930V. io \he present-day resurgence both here and on the
island.
The Puerto Ri-ari people are a divided nation, with about
2,700,000 Puerto Rii-an* living in Puerto Rico and about 2,000,000 living =;i
the US. This is the result of a conscious US strategy: its scheme to
industrialize Puerto Rico in the 1950s was promoted to create a haven for
US corporations seeking cheap labor and tax-free production. This led to the
destruction of Puerto Rican agriculture and the forced migration in miliiosvj.
pushed off the land and unahie to find work in the crowded cities, (.ailed
"Operation Bootstrap," this was the widely-heralded mode! of 1.5 ''Vdd'* to
the Third World. It was a cruel attempt to destroy a nation and divide a
people for the benefit oi US corporate profit.
Emigration continues to be encouraged by the LS as a means of
defusing Puerto Riean resistance and dealing with mass unemployment on
the island. While helping to tighten US control, the forced migration ha- afso
provided a cheap labor supply for low-wage employers in the US. Sixty
percent of all Puerto Rican workers hi this country make less than $100 a
week. They work at punishing jobs in the garment and textile industries, as
secretaries, in hospitals, and as migrant labor on capitalist farms iuicicr the
most inhumane conditions. Low pay goes hand-in-hand with staggering
unemployment rates —the permanent condition of the reserve army of labor.
Characterized by both special oppression and strategic importance,
Puerto Rico has a unique relationship to US imperialism. Puerto Rico is the
fifth largest market for US goods in the world; over one half of all US
in vestmentsin Latin Am erica arc there— a staggering figure of" $6 ,80f) ,000 ,000.
Eighty-five percent of Puerto RicoV industrial capital, one of the keys \o s
country's development, is in the hands of North Americans, San Juati hears
the tell-tale mark of empire -prostitution, hotels, gambling, skros.
Puerto Rico is ihc military center for the US in the Caribbean.
There are two nuclear weapons bases and 1 3% of the best arable land is usori
for US military purposes. Troops from the island were used in Panama in
1964 and the Dominican Republic in 1905. This military presence is a
waffling to all Puerto Ricans and a threat to the rest of the Caribbean,
particularly socialist Cuba.
One of the chief examples of Puerto Rico's colonial relationship to
the US is the superport: a petrochemical and mineral processing complex
which US-based multinational oil companies, the Puerto Rican cplonial
government and the Nixon administration are proposing to build in Puerto
Rico. The complex is due to be finished over the next 25 years. Its
completion would mean the physical destruction of Puerto Rico as a nation.
More rich agricultural land than ever would be destroyed, and the area
around the plants would become a vast wasteland. The devastation from oil
spills would be incalculable. Estimates are that as many as one million Puerto
Ricans would be forced to leave the country. The attempt to stop the
superport is a major focus of the Puerto Rican independence movement.
When we look at the importance of Puerto Rico to the US, we can
begin to understand the historic significance of the Puerto Rican movement.
The Puerto Rican nation will not die. It is born again and again thru the
culture and the struggles of the people on the island, and the people here.
Living in the barrios of major cities, mostly on the East Coast,
Puerto Ricans in the US are subjected to many attempts to destroy their
culture and their nation. The economic basis of the Puerto Rican community
— Jow-skiO jobs and small bodega ownership— is increasingly shaky. Puerto
Ricans face conditions of rotten housing, poor health care, brutal police
ireafriient and institutionalized racism. Colonialism is at work in the schools.
Puerto Eican children are denied the dignity of their nation's history and
language, not taught to read, and tracked into useless "general diploma"
programs.
98
Against this background the Puerto Rican nation re-emerged inside
the US too. In Dec. 1969, the Young Lords took over a church in Spanish
Harlem and invited "All New York'1 to the People's Church. Puerto Rican
communities were stirring, many fronts were opened up: the struggle for
people's control of Lincoln Hospital in New York City, where Blacks and
Puerto Ricans were being abused daily; the ongoing battle for genuine
community control of the schools of District One in New York; the
continuing day-to-day work of groups like El Comite around tenants' and
welfare rights; the fight to free political prisoners like Martin Sostre, Gabriel
and Francisco Torres, and the Nationalist fighters; the defense of Carlos
Feliciano and Pancho Cruz.
The present-day resistance has its roots in the movements and the
fighters who have come before: in Don Pedro Albizu-Campos, the great
Nationalist leader; in Lolila Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irving Flores
and Andres Figueroa Cordero, still in jail after twenty years imprisonment
for the armed attack on the US Congress in 1954; in Oscar Collazo, another
Nationalist fighter who remains in prison for the attempted assassination of
Harry Truman in 1950.
Many forces and organizations now carry on the struggle. The U.N.
resolution was presented by the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and
the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP). The PSP was invited as an observer to
the recent Non-Aligned Nations Conference in Algiers. The Puerto Rican
movement has continued its armed resistance to US imperialism through the
actions of the Armed Commandos of Liberation (CAL) who have attacked
US-owned companies and the Condado Hotel strip, center of US tourism.
Within the US, MIRA —an armed revolutionary Puerto Rican group— has
attacked many businesses and large stores.
The Puerto Rican movement is a living bond to national liberation
struggles in Latin America, an explosive threat to US power. As it continues
to grow stronger and more forceful, activists from every movement are
pushed to giveconcretesupport through action and organizing. Learning the
history of Puerto Rico, understanding and supporting the Puerto Rican
movement, and learning to speak Spanish —the people's language— are all
necessities for movement organizers in the US.
INDEPENDENCE FOR PUERTO RICO I
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE PUERTO RICAN PEOPLE !
FREE ALL PUERTO RICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS !
STOP THE SUPERPORT I
! PUERTO
RICO j
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99
GUINE-BISSAU
Guine-Bissau is a small country of 800,000 people on the West
coast of Africa. It was from her shores that Portugal initiated thenotorious
West African slave trade over four hundred years ago. Since 1963, a fierce
people's war has been waged by the forces of the African Party for the
Independence of Guine and the Cape Verde Islands (PAIGC). They have
been fighting and defeating over 35,000 Portuguese troops who have been
armed, supplied and trained by the US and other NATO powers.
On September 24, 1973, Aristides Pereira, Secretary-General of
PAIGC, declared Guine-Bissau independent from Portuguese rule. He
announced that the new Republic of Guine-Bissau would continue to battle
the Portuguese soldiers on its territory and would also press for the
liberation of the Cape Verde Islands. Soon after, the U.N. General Assembly
voted overwhelmingly to extend recognition to the new nation.TheUS, along
with South Africa, Portugal and Israel, opposed the resolution. Eighty-two
nations have now formally recognized the new government.
Revolution has profoundly changed Guinean life. PAIGC has
liberated almost three-fourths of the countryside. Many people now attend
schools in places where no schools existed before. Health care has become a
priority in a country where only one hospital was built by Portugal in over
one hundred years. Women have assumed a central role in the revolutionary
process, breaking from the limits and oppression of the colonial past.
Liberation continues to flower in the midst of battle —this is what PAIGC
calls "building the revolution as we fight."
Amilcar Cabral was the leader of PAIGC until his assassination by
Portuguese agents in January 1973. Cabral was a powerful, unifying
spokesperson for all the African liberation movements. He was one of the
truly great, original revolutionary theorists of this era, a dedicated fighter in
the cause of liberation. His murder was a cruel blow to Africa and to the
world revolution.
Guine-Bissau is the first Portuguese colony to declare
independence. Its liberation struggle has had an effect in Africa similar to thc
worldwide effects of the Vietnamese struggle. It has been a catalyst for the
movements in the other Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique,
and has spurred the rise of revolution throughout Southern Africa. At the
same time, the liberation movements have won more open support from the
Organization of African Unity (OAU), which represents a broad range of
African states.
In Angola, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
(MPLA) has liberated one third of the land —territory inhabited by one
milbon Angolans. In Mozambique, the guerrillas of the Mozambique
Liberation Front (FRELIMO) have launched a powerful new offensive
against the centers of Portuguese power. FRELIMO forces have crossed the
Zambezi River, the supposedly impenetrable natural defense line of Portugal
in Mozambique. They have challenged Portugal's planned operation of the
huge Caborra Bassa Dam on the Zambezi River. Combined with attacks on
the strategic railway between landlocked Rhodesia and the Mozambiean port
of Beira, these FRELIMO operations have shaken Portugal's hold on the
country.
100
Portugal is a poor country, run since 1924 by a fascist dictatorship. It spends
over 50% of its budget on the military and has fielded an army of 250,000
troops to fight in Africa. Like all colonialist and imperialist countries,
Portugal is now seeing the chickens come home to roost. Its attempts to
crush liberation in Africa have created the conditions for rebellion at home.
Over 100,000 youth have fled the country to avoid the draft. Others have
deserted from the army. Armed attacks within Portugal have risen —in April,
a troop ship about to sail from Lisbon to Guine-Bissau with 1,000 men
aboard, was rocked by an explosion. The action was claimed by the
Revolutionary Brigade Organization.
The recent military coup in Portugal reflects the success of the
African guerrillas and the deep opposition to the wars among large numbers
of Portuguese, It could be said of the ousted fascist government of Marcello
Caetano what Cabral said of the death of the previous Portuguese dictator
Salazar: "Africa was the disease which killed him." The coup has unleashed a
wave of open anti-fascist organizing among the Portuguese people and has
also triggered intensified popular pressure to end tire African wars.
It is doubtful, however, that the new junta will agree to the only
possible solution in Africa: complete independence for Angola,
Mozambique, and Guine-Bissau. The junta's leader, General Antonio Spinola,
fought with the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, served with the Nazi Army
during World War II, and was the major Portuguese eommander in the losing
war against Guine-Bissau. Spinola has floated out visions of neoeolonial
non-solutions which have been categorically rejected by the liberation forces,
Luis Cabral, the new President of the Republic of Guine-Bissau has said:
Spinola talks a lot and he has been known to make a lot of
promises. But we know that the only language he listens to
comes from the guns of our forces, hitting him and hitting
him and hitting him again.
Portugal could not sustain its colonial wars without the aid of the
Western imperial powers. As' a NATO member it receives arms and supplies
from the US and Western Europe. Southern Africa is of great strategic
importance to imperialism —a source of valuable raw materials, cheap labor,
high-profit investments. Victories for PAIGC, FRELIMO, and MPLA could
pose a serious threat to racist rule in the whole area. Consequently, the
battle lines have hardened and the LIS has more openly supported Portugal
and the white racist governments in South Africa and Rhodesia.
In 1971, the Nixon government gave Portugal a $436 million loan
in return for continued use of the Azores Islands as a military base. US
companies have a growing stake in Portuguese success; they now are the
third largest investors in the Portuguese colonies. Gulf Oil Company pays
Portugal $62 million a year for its rights to oil resources on theAngolan
coast (Cabinda). In November, 1973, Gulf acknowledged the discovery of
new deposits in this area which it called "the most prolific south of the
Middle East." When the Arab states halted oil shipments to Portugal and
South Africa, Gulf helped take up the slack, sending oil to both countries
and Mozambique.
UBKHATW] ZOXLS OF ANGOLA, MOZAMBIQUE, AND GUINEA-BISSAU
Over half of all US African investments are in South Africa, which
functions as a junior partner of Western imperialism. South Africa is
currently fighting liberation movements in Namibia (Southwest Africa),
Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and within its own borders. As Portugal loses its hold
over Angola and Mozambique, more direct South African intervention is
likely.
This is the Southern Axis in Africa -Portugal, South Africa, the
US, the ."SATO powers, Rhodesia - lined up against millions of Africans
demanding self-determination. The fight tor liberation in Southern Africa is
i strategic center-point in the battle against imperialism.
The African liberation struggles have been hidden wars, rarely
mentioned in the US press. It has taken the concerted work of the Black
movement to break the silence in this country. Black organizations have
pushed forward boycott campaigns against Gulf Oil and Portuguese
products, have opposed US support for Portugal and South Africa, and are
now demanding IS recognition of the new Republic of Guine-Bissau.
Longshoremen in Baton Rouge, Baltimore and San "Francisco have refused to
unload shipments of Rbodcsian chrome, brought here in violation of a U.N.
ban.
All these activities are important for our movement to support and
help build, Willi the current crisis in Portugal, this is a key time to intensify
worldwide support for the African liberation movements. While some
movement organizers are now engaged in work around Africa, many more of
us should make it a part of our daily work. This involves both commitment
to action and to political education: a good place to begin is with Amilcar
Cabral's writings —Revolution in Guinc. Return to the Source, Our People
are Our Mountains-- and Basil Davidson's Liberation of Guine. Learn from
the people. A basis can be laid within the movement for a new level of
solidarity with the African struggles.
PORTUGAL OUT OF AFRICA!
NO US OR iS'ATO AID TO PORTUGAL
OR SOUTH AFRICA!
RECOGNIZE GUINE-BISSAU!
102
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103
THE PALESTINIAN MOVEMENT
People have been confused and misled into thinking that the
situation in the Mideast is impossibly complicated. Blindness to the
Palestinian people is at the root of this quandary. The Palestinian struggle is
a genuine and deep-rooted movement for national liberation. \s a people.
they have actively opposed colonization of their lands from the beginning:
against the Turkish rulers, against (he British empire, and now against
Zionism as embodied in the state of Israel. This is the key to the past and the
future of the Mideast. There is a sobering similarity between the situation of
the Palestinians and the history of the Native American people. The reality is
that Israel is an expansionist power, based on zionist colonialism.
For seven years, the Palestinian liberation movement has been the
leading resistance to Zionism and Israeli military supremacy in the Mideast.
In the October War, the Arab nations delivered a major blow to Israel,
destroying the myth of Israeli military invincibility, weakening her position
in the world and heightening contradictions within Israel itself. The Arab
demands were for the return of (he Israeli-occupied lands seized during the
1967 Six Day War in which Israel more than Lripled its size. At the core of
Mideast politics, unsettled by the October War or the US-Soviet negotiations
about the Mideast, arc the Palestinian people.
The Palestinians are 3.3 million landless people, dispersed primarily
in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, They have
become the people of the diaspora -exiled from their homeland of
thousands of years by the state of Israel and the ideology of zionism.
Referred to in the US press as "Arab terrorists". ''Arab refugees", or
"Southern Syrians", the Palestinians have been struggling to return to their
land and for their right to self-determination and liberation. Their claim is
just; it is based on the fact of Palestinian national existence: a common
heritage, the labor of their ancestors, the cultivation of citrus and olives,
trade, the building of the cities of Haifa, Jaffa and Lydda, their culture, their
dignity as a people.
For 24 years, hundreds of thousands of proud Palestinians have
been forced into hastily set up U.N. refugee camps with no means of survival
except food depots and U.N. rations. Displaced again in 1967, this time from
the occupied territories, the Palestinians faced a second exodus, twice
refugees. The atrocious camps, originally organized as a temporary measure,
are the living grievance —they express the contradiction embodied in the
existence of Israel at the expense of Palestine.
Israel has never recognized the Palestinians'' rights. Zionist leaders
have rejected U.N. resolutions calling for the return of the refugees to their
homeland, rejected the idea that the "so-called Palestinian people" exist, and
insisted that they are the Arabs 'problem, not theirs. From the outset, Israel
has worked toward a purely Jewish state.
It was after the holocaust in Europe in which half the Jewish
population of Europe was slaughtered by the fascists that the creation of
Israel became a reality. The US and other Western powers denied
immigration to Jewish refugees and encouraged migration to the land of
Palestine. Zionists colluded with the imperialists to create Israel on an
already-populated land.
104
From its inception, zionism has been an imperial ideology,
presented as an alternative to communism, Theodore Herzl, recognized as
the founder of modern zionism, had toyed with the idea of establishing a
Jewish slate in Uganda or Kenya and was blunt about zionist alliances:
England with her possessions in Asia should be most
interested in Zionism, for the shortest road to India is by way
of Palestine. England's great politicians were the first to
recognize the need for colonial expansion. That is why Great
Britain's ensign flies on all the oceans. And so I must believe
that here in England, the idea of Zionism, which is a colonial
idea, should be easily and quickly understood in its true and
most modern form.
Israel is a settler colony. After World War II, with the British driven
out, the U.K. partitioned Palestine in favor of the Zionists. The Hagana and
the Irgun, zionist terror organizations, initiated a campaign of violence
against the Palestinian people to force them off their land and out of the
cities: to create a state "clean of Arabs." At Deir Yassin, the Irgun killed
every one of the 254 Palestinian inhabitants on April 9, 1948. Poorly armed,
over a million Palestinians fled over the borders, leaving everything behind.
Israel seized and confiscated their immense lands and their property under
the Absentee Property Laws and justified this occupation with the lie that
the Palestinians left of their own free will. The 1 2% of the Palestinian people
who remained behind became hired labor on their own lands or in
settlements, and lived under military control, treated as an inferior people.
Israe! is an expansionist country. In three successive wars since
partition, they have conquered and occupied Egyptian land, Syrian land, and
Jordanian land. Forty percent of the Israeli budget is taken up by war.
During the October War, the US airlifted supplies of up to 800 tons of war
equipment per day to Israel through the Portuguese-held Azores and Kixon
got a 82.2 billion request for military spending for Israel. Israeli government
policy is periodic warfare, "... eternal war imposed by destiny."
Israel is a class society. Kot only is it based on the special colonial
relationship of super -exploitation of native Palestinians, but half the Jewish
population are immigrants from Asia and Africa -"Oriental1' Jews— who
face particular exploitation doing unskilled labor, living in the worst housing,
discriminated against by "European" Jews. In addition, because Israel is a
religious state, non-jews are denied basic rights. These conflicts have been
submerged by zionism, yet the tensions and contradictions have produced
frustration and opposition among some sectors in Israel, particularly the
young.
Israel's economy is weak, in spite of the enormous theft of
Palestinian land and labor. It is dependent on foreign capital: German
reparations, US aid and billions from Western donations. In 1967, Israel
received U)% of all US foreign aid. The Nixon administration boasts that it
has given Israel more aid than the combined total of all previous
administrations. Israel is a client state of US imperialism, serving as
policeman and favored partner in the exploitation of the Mideast and
Northern Africa.
105
fc>lf rfferc^v. iV-^i^ Man iv^w^eb'Wo {jMp
The zionist government in Israel supported the US in Vietnam,
supports the fascist junta in Chile and opposes ah liberation movements in
Africa. Since the i 967 war, 26 African nations have severed relations with
Israel on the basis of Israeli occupation, of Arab land. This is also a
consequence of Israel's attempt to penetrate and dominate African
development. South Africa and Rhodesia continue ties with Israel.
Zionist colonialism has cultivated a worldwide image as the
besieged victim, the heroic people holding off the barbarians, a
semi-socialist state where strong and free sabras made the desert bloom, the
refuge and guarantee against anti-semitism. The reality is very different:
— The Zionist state is clearly the aggressor, the source of violence
and war in the Mideast, the occupier of stolen lands. The military solutions
of periodic war and expansion, reprisal raids and constant preparation for
war are the consequence of intransigent opposition to a politically
cooperative future with Palestinians and Arabs. It is racist and expansionist
—the enemy of Palestinians, the Arab people, and the Jewish people.
— Israeli society internally reflects this imperialist reality :
militarized, commercial and competitive.
—The myth of socialism on the kibbutz is a powerful one, but the
kibbutzim never contained more than 5% of the Jewish population of
Palestine or Israel, and are no evidence for Israel being a socialist country.
Many of the kibbutzim are on land which Palestinian peasants were driven
from, some directly exploit Palestinian tabor, and they are all subsidized by
Zionist funds.
106
-■Zionism does not represent Jews. It is a racist ideology based on
the claim that. "God" chose a people superior to others. It has been
consistently used as an alternative to class struggle and socialism for Jews,
undermining Jewish progressive and working-class traditions.
—There is no basis for the claim that zionism is a bulwark against
anti-semitism. The zionist slate has allied with the most repressive and
intolerant, racist and anti-semitic regimes in the world: IVixon, Thieu, South
Africa, and the Chilean junta.
The white movement in the US has failed to give elear and open
support to the Palestinian struggle. We have not taken on the necessary task
of exposing the myths about Israel which cloak the true situation and disarm
many people. The nature of the state of Israel is protected by intense
passions and by the real memories of Nazism and anti-semitism. But despite
ancestors at Auschwitz and relatives in Israel, we cannot escape the
responsibility of opposing the crimes of the Israeli government and the
consequences of zionist ideology.
From exile and despair, the Palestinians have slowly developed their
resistance capability. They began to lead and define their own political and
guerrilla movement, which accelerated after the Arab defeat in the 1967 war.
Their brave battle at Karameh in 1968 helped make them the focal point of
resistance to Zionism and galvanized the national identity and yearnings of
the whole people. The forces and organizations of Palestinian liberation
trained thousands of Palestinians and began to mobilize their people, to
provide health and administrative services, to reclaim their history. The
active participation of Palestinian women in the struggle for liberation
challenges the long history of women's subservience and dependence which
has been bolstered by religion and family. The Union for Palestinian Women
is active within all the camps, with a primary focus on education and fighting
the economic oppression of women.
The Palestinian strategy has been to carry out operations against
the zionist state and Israeli-held territory and to remind the world of the
Palestinian people's cause. Their solution is a democratic secular Palestine
that will accomodate all Palestinians: Jews, Moslems and Christians. The
Palestinian Liberation Organization is the umbrella organization which
coordinates policy of the liberation forces.
The Palestinian liberation movement is a most progressive force in
the Mideast, as is the revolution of South Yemen —known as the Cuba of the
Mideast. The Palestinians have educated masses of people, opened up the
revolution to women and demonstrated fearless determination to win. Their
proposal of a democratic secular state stands in marked contrast to
rhetorical threats to annihilate the Jews or reactionary expressions of
anti-semitism. The Palestinians make a firm distinction between zionism and
Jews.
The presence of the Palestinian struggle is a touchstone for other
contradictions in the Mideast. The Palestinian freedom fighters are a highly
politicized group, a militant nucleus, scattered in five "host" countries. A
principle of the liberation movement has been that the revolution is
Palestinian in origin and Arab in extension. The dedicated fedayeen have
stimulated wide support among Arab people. Their struggle and their
determined independence from Arab governments in whose lands they live,
train and organize, makes them a force for revolutionary change throughout
the Arab world.
107
Often Arab governments have rhetorically used the Palestinian
cause to maintain their own power and control, while consistently leaving
the Palestinians out of negotiations and excluding them from a dignified life
within their countries. These rulers are fully aware of the threat posed to
their power fay a vital liberation movement strategically located in their
midst. Yet they are somewhat restrained by the immense popularity of the
movement among the people of the Arab countries.
This precarious balance was shattered by "Black September." Over
half the population of Jordan was Palestinian when King Hussein unleashed a
major military attack to liquidate the Palestinian revolution in September
1970. The US backed Hussein with a continuous flow of arms and the threat
of intervention with the 6th fleet. Thousands of Palestinians were murdered,
refugee camps were bombarded and destroyed, leaders executed. This was a
severe setback. The Palestinians have since regrouped in Lebanon and Syria
and rebuilt their forces.
Palestinian independence is opposed with reactionary schemes by
Jordan, completely opposed with military terror by Israel, and manipulated
by the US. The US-sponsored notion of stability and status-quo in the
Mideast is an attempt to preserve US imperialist control of oil, using zionist
power as the cat's paw. The Mideast has become a world focus of struggles
over oil resources and control of strategic sea and air routes. Yet the
Palestinian struggle is at the heart of other conflicts in the Mideast. Only the
Palestinians can determine the solution which reflects the aspirations of the
Palestinian people. No "settlements" in the Mideast which exclude the
Palestinians will resolve the conflict. Palestinian liberation will not be
suppressed.
The US people have been seriously deceived about the Palestinians
and Israel. This calls for a campaign to educate and focus attention on the
true situation: teach-ins, debates, and open clear support for Palestinian
liberation; reading about the Palestinian movement -The Disinherited by
Fawaz Turki, Enemy of the Sun; opposing US aid to Israel. Our silence or
acceptance of pro-zionist policy is a form of complicity with US-hackcd
aggression and terror, and a betrayal of internationalism.
SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE
PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
US OUT OF THE MIDEAST !
END AID TO ISRAEL!
V IMPERIALISM IN CRISIS:
THE HOME FRONT
In Vietnam the imperialist soldiers encounter the discomforts
of those who, accustomed to the vaunted US standard of
living, must face a hostile land, the insecurity of those who
are unable to move without being aware of walking on enemy
territory, death to those who advance beyond their fortified
encampments, the permanent hostility of an entire
population. All this provokes internal repercussions in the US
and encourages the resurgence of a factor which was
attenuated in the full vigor of imperialism: class struggle even
within its own territory.
Che Guevara
Message to the Tricontinental
FRIENDS AND ENEMIES
We are living in a huge and naturally beautiful land. The mountains,
the deserts and the plains hold the riches of history from Indian tribes who
dwelt here — places like Four Corners and the Black Hills, sacred land to the
Navaho and the Sioux. Eagles fly overhead in some areas, and coyotes howl
at the moon. Snow lands, river lands: travelled manv times, seen hv manv
people's eyes.
No wonder we scream at the plunder, the wastefulness and
wreckage. The streams and lakes float with dead fish, victims of industrial
waste: the mountains are ripped apart for the wealth of strip-mined coal; the
air is thick with pollution. Profit chases greed in a reckless race across the
Earth.
109
Most people live in the cities, giant centers oi' commerce and
production. The cities contain tremendous potential for human development
and community, but the potential is mocked by the reality: burned and
abandoned houses, dirty avenues and children living in cold apartments —this
crowded up against extravagant wealth and the centers of imperial power,
Still the culture of the many peoples grows tenaciously.
What kind of society is it? It is a class society, torn by
contradictions: the heartland of a bloody empire built on the attempted
genocide of Native Americans, the trade in African slaves, the lives of
Chinese and Japanese and Filipino workers, the exploitation of successive
waves of immigrant labor. It is an imprisoner of nations -Guam, Samoa, the
Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Black and Chicano nations. Like
other empires, it combines stolen lands, stolen riches and stolen labor.
THE ANARCHY OF PRODUCTION
Stolen wealth —not Yankee ingenuity— is the basis of the
tremendous concentration in the US of productive forces -large factories
with advanced machinery, elaborate computer systems, highly extended
organization, the labor of women and men from many nations- all
contributing to an astounding productive capability.
This accumulated productive power is used for the most selfish and
backward purposes. Whereas this wealth is produced by the people of the
world, it is used to enrich the idle handful that controls it, and to subjugate
the dispossessed with the destructive power of economic control and war.
Monopoly capital/imperialism is an irrational system. It is not
organized to meet human needs. It is run by a very small ruling class whose
only morality is the morality of the maximum profit.
This handful of white men control the enormous concentrations of
wealth, the means of production, the government. These are the imperialists,
the common enemy. They hog the wealth which the people produce.
Thirty-two per cent of the personal wealth in the US is owned by 1,6% of
the population.
Wrho are these enemies' Of all the imperial dynasties and major
thieves of our time, the Rockefeller family stands out: the phenomenal
growth of their clan's influence and riches parallels the development of US
imperialism. They are the richest people in the wrorld, richer than anyone has
ever been before, and they are getting richer all the time. Their wealth is
about as much as all the Blacks, Chicanos, Indians, Puerto Ricans and forty
million poor whites in the US have put together. Like the other imperial
dynasties and families, their wealth has been dispersed into an invisible
empire which has spread to every corner of the world. It is an empire which
includes the world's largest banks and industrial corporations —aerospace,
computers, oil, insurance, telephones and television. The Rockefellers
control 20% of banking in the US and 20% of all its industry. This vast
empire of wealth and power is built to grow, to self -perpetuate, to entangle
everywhere on earth that it can. It feeds on domination over the people; its
social policies are welfare cuts, stop and frisk, drug detention laws. It
dislocates whole populations from our cities for the construction of huge
monuments to the god profit, to commerce and world trade. It meets
rebellion —as at Attica— with. I.he iron heel. The Rockefellers' policies exist
for the continued emmlseratlon of most of humanity and the continued
spiral of concentration of power and wealth into their hands.
They arc not l he only ones. The heads of Ford and General Motors
each receive yearly salaries of almost Si ,000,000, vet one third of the US
people are considered poor by the government's figures. We measured the
energy crisis by cold houses, sick, children and lost jobs, while the oil
companies increased their profits over last year by as much as 130%.
This irrational and revolting system leaves much social wealth
wasted and undeveloped. T\ liat is produced bears little relationship to what is
needed. For this reason Marxist-Leninists speak 01 the "anarchy of
production" when we refer to the wav productive forces are organized under
imperialism. The great, injustice of this system is (.hat. it leaves its potential
unrealized while maintaining scarcity for billions of people.
All economic activity that does not go to satisfy human need is
waste. Advertising and marketing (a 830 billion a year business), useless
consumer goods, planned obsolescence, bureaucracy, the military -all aspects
of waste- add up to the social cost of maintaining this outmoded system. It
is working people and the oppressed of empire who bear the cost.
The scale on which military spending consumes capital is staggering,
The annual military budget is larger than the net incomes of all US
corporations put together. With this the US maintains missiles, submarines,
electronic warfare and chemical and biological agents, nuclear weapons,
bomber forces and over three thousand military bases around the world. This
dominance of miliiarizatiou in the economy distorts every aspect of US life.
THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE
The pmpuse of class analysis is to isolate the enemy and to identify
our potential friends. Who will lead the fight? Who can be won over? Who at
least neutralized? This framework is as important as battle plans.
Class analysis should not use the borders of the US like blinders on
a horse. This deprives ns of the full picture and throws strategy into chaos.
Domestic class analysis must be integrated with the reality of US imperialism
as a world economy. There is one system operating internally and externally:
there is a unified strategy for power and control although the application
and tactics vary greatlv; there is one main class enemy. Class analysis must
see the entire sv.s!em mid realistically take account of imperial plunder, the
distorting culture of privilege and racism, and the realities of national
division.
In the US the. imperialists stand opposed to the huge majority of
poor and work!ii£ people who have no control over the fruits of our labor.
The nHhig eliss divides us against each other by mechanisms of
stratification :nul competition, and thereby maintains its own power. Some
of these divsrii-.is ^re based on real differences in wealth, statuss power,
freedom, abilUv to Huvvive mid be happy. Some of them are imposed by
school, by relink:. is draining or the family. We are Imbued with the sense of
different ness !;■.■:/■ jther people in the world. The strength of the divisions
among us mes^.ir-?? only the effectiveness of control over all dispossessed
people by7 the rnler- of society. The revolutionary process will sweep these
111
away, seize the transformation oi' society as a whole, and do away with
privilege and advantage,
US society is corrupted by the values that necessarily accompany
piracy —racism, greed, competitiveness, brutality, sexism, callousness. The
ruling class calls the backward, criminal aspects of culture into being and sets
them into motion. The society is the rat-race, marked hv an anti-social
premium on individualism. There is a stark poverty for masses of people
materially and culturally, a poverty in the quality of life.
—Hunger and starvation are world realities. In the US over 30
million people cannot afford to meet basic nutritional needs. In spite of
these facts, the US government pays farmers billions of dollars a year not to
grow food. This keeps food prices high. The war of the rich and the poor has
taken on terrible proportions —the face of famine, malnutrition, epidemic
against the face of glut.
—Close to half the US population has one or more chronic
conditions —diabetes, asthma, arthritis, heart diseases, high blood pressure.
Medical care is inadequate and inaccessible to most people, Since 1960,
medical costs have been rising twice as fast as the skyrocketing cost of living,
and hospital costs five times. One night in a hospital costs a week's pay for a
worker. Health insurance companies arc getting rich from the people's pain.
The horror intensifies for poor people: malnutrition is the great hidden cause
of disease in the US. With humane priorities, the violence of socially
unnecessary pain would be eradicated , women's health would be a priority,
people would not die from hunger or poverty-related illness.
112
—Illiteracy is increasing in the US. Schools systematically refuse to
teach Black and Third World children to read; millions of people in this
country are illiterate. Schools are minimum security prisons, geared to
repression and control of the young, to teaching the lessons of competition,
self-hatred, fear and loneliness.
—Work is hard to get: unemployment in early 1974 is running at
5.1%of the work-force. This is considered acceptable by capitalist economists.
The government also admits Lhat there are at least another 8-10%
unemployed or underemployed who are not shown in the statistics. These
low estimates add up to 12,000,000 US workers out of work or
semi-employed. Women are chronically underemployed; large numbers of
young people arc marginally employed; Black people have twice the
unemployment rate of the population as a whole.
When people do find work, it is alienating and oppressive under
imperialism. Industrial accidents resulting in deaths or serious injury are
astronomical. Speedup at plants like the Vega plant in Lordstown, Ohio,
leave workers exhausted, tense and drained at the end of the day. Miners
suffer from chronic lung diseases.
Factory discipline is rigidly enforced. Between 1960-1968,
disciplinary cases doubled at Ford plants in the US. Absenteeism among
workers is on the rise. Work in the US stifles and imprisons the worker.
Production for war and waste turns the fulfilling aspect of work into its
hateful opposite.
—One-quarter of the US people are living in substandard housing,
dilapidated or lacking in adequate plumbing or heating, firetraps. Half of the
Black people in the US live in bad housing. Peeling paint in tenements has
led to a major plague of lead paint poisoning; lead poisoning today cripples
more children annually than did polio before the Salk vaccine. Children are
exposed to rat bi tes as well as broken-down facilities leading to accidents and
disease. Families are forced to pay high rents for rotten apartments. The
system's "solutions" to these criminal conditions are urban renewal which
tears apart poor people's communities in order to build more profitable
higher-rent apartments, irrational tract-housing which destroys the
countryside, and mobile homes Mdiich are structurally unsound and
dangerous —financed at incredible profits. The housing crisis produces
profits for real estate speculators and big landlords and unlivable conditions
for millions of US people.
—Old age, instead of being a mark of respect and value, is scary in
our society. Old people arc poor, many die in old-age homes as if age were a
disease. This society discards those whose labor is no longer exploitable for
market value. The premium put on youth distorts human links between
generations. Old people's lessons from life and stories of the past are seldom
learned. Our loss.
—Children are denied self-respect, dignity and creativity. They have
no social power in a driving, competitive society. Almost nothing is built
with small people in mind —stairs, toilets, turnstiles, signs, systems of
transportation. Schools, television and publishing companies subject young
people to a brutal culture of ultra-violence, sexist stereotypes and racism.
Children are denied community; day-care facilities are minimal and always
facing severe cutbacks. Kids are newer people and have, by the fact of being
born, earned the rights that all human beings deserve.
113
— Personal debt to banks and corporsuuii:: h
astronomically in the past decade, Tlie ruling ctes.- v-ou-
millions of people by tying them to the svsfejrj wiih dehl
inflation and unemployment, delinquencies on ii!:-tau;ner
high during January and February 1974.
increased
>!?■ and manages
Because of high
loans hit a new
,T k$-
r,?-
" "T 'i,"-= :-
"ft
»ici"-.'5:--sij.,-.i"r;Ift
lifts
fi' ;* i;- ■-
114
All of {.his has a profoundly destructive effect on the people and
the quality of life in the US. People turn against one another and ourselves.
Over one half of the hospital beds in the US are occupied by mental patients.
Alcoholism, drug addiction, child beating, rape, gambling, anger and suicide
are all at crisis proportions.
h'or people in the US the basic fact of life is fear. People are afraid
of society. No one knows what is going to happen. Fear of illness, fear of
getting laid off. Afraid to go outdoors, Afraid of Black people moving into
the neighborhood, afraid of loss of status, afraid of not looking right, afraid
of being taken advantage of, afraid to speak up, afraid of growing old.
Still, Vietnam and Black rebellion, the resistance of youth and the
rising of women begin to pry open minds and reclaim people imperialism
tried to destroy. It is harder to sell the bourgeois life. The lace over the
machinery of greed and brutality has gaping holes. The circus has lost its
glitter. Imperialism's seamy side is up for those who will examine its ugly
contours and help plan its downfall.
THE CHANGING NATURE OF THE WORKLNG CLASS
People who must sell their labor power in order to survive make up
the large and growing US proletariat (working class). The position in society
of the working class is in fundamental conflict with the role and function
and activities of the imperialists.
Oppressed peoples, women and youth and other anti-imperialist
forces can and should deliver telling blows against the empire now; the actual
building of socialism cannot succeed without the active support of the
industrial proletariat.
This is the proletariat's historic mission. It is a revolutionary duty
to analyze and interpret the factors and causes which are obstacles to
forward motion of the working-class in the struggle against the class enemy.
One can repeat formulas of class structure according to income and
work and feel like a lot has been accomplished. But what is needed is a
concrete analysis of concrete conditions, "the living soul of Marxism." What
is needed is a method that analyzes the motion of society, the contradictions
and the changes, in relationship to historic realities, possibilities, and
necessities. In the US in the past twenty years, the white industrial
proletariat has seldom exercised its revolutionary initiative.
Third World peoples in the US, and also women, youth and
members of the armed forces have shown the most consistent initiative and
practice as measured by the decisive anti-imperialist struggle of this entire
period: the war in Vietnam. These groups have been the carriers of
proletarian internationalism for this time.
The historic prediction of the leading role of the industrial
proletariat in capitalist countries emphasized the concrete processes hy
which the workers would be socialized and would increasingly find
themselves in a common situation of oppression. One of the defining
characteristics of the US working class is that it is composed of workers of
both the oppressor and the oppressed nations. Any attempt to predict the
role of the US working class must place great emphasis on the leadership that
115
has been given by Black and Third World people.
The changing nature of the working class places Black and Third
World workers in a strategic position. They have become a major part of
basic industry —steel, auto, chemical, transportation— as well as the vital
sectors that serviee the cities —hospital, transit and clerical work. This has
created a new level of militant leadership from below, challenging while
supremacy in the unions, confronting and radicalizing white co-workers.
Black and Third World workers have raised demands in the interest of the
whole class, including the colonized of empire —in contrast to the existing
leadership of the labor aristocracy, represented by the AFL-CIO hierarchy,
which raises demands that favor the most skilled, works against the interests
of the poor and the unorganized, and helps sustain imperialism.
Imperialism on the decline creates new historic conditions for
organizing revolutionary struggles in the oppressor nation. The crisis has
affected millions. But crisis does not automatically produce red
consciousness. The traditional solution to domestic economic crisis -war-
remains an option for imperialism. In the face of imperial decline, the rulers
make fascistic appeals to whites to try to recoup economic stability and
privilege by going along with and enforcing even more intensified oppression
of Third World people —welfare cutbacks, miseducation, and expeditionary
war against Third World revolution. The imperialists are only able to do this
by launching counterrevolution at home as well as abroad.
The revolutionary potential and contribution of poor, unemployed
and imprisoned people cannot be dismissed with the category
"lumpen-proletariat." Modern imperialism involves chronic stagnation,
creating large numbers of permanently unemployed or underemployed
people. This large group cannot be equated with the small group described
by Marx, Cultural and community ties between today's unemployed and the
most exploited workers here plays a leading role in working-class struggle.
Working-class unity cannot be built on the terms of the most privileged
sectors. Rather, the demands of the most oppressed must be the basis f'or
isolating the labor aristocracy in their support for US imperialism, and for
building a revolutionary class unity.
There is as yet no dynamic way to analyze the class position of
116
women. The class of a woman is typically determined by the class of her
husband or her father. This solely derivative criteria is sexist. The usual
alternative is to define a woman's class solely by her role in the work force.
Yet in itself this is inadequate since the overwhelming majority of women
perform socially necessary labor of reproducing and caring for children, and
taking care of home and mate. The work of women holds up half the sky, A
synthesis of women's household work and her work in the productive
process is demanded by these conditions and has yet to be fully achieved.
The concept of a giant, inclusive "middle-class" as applied to
salaried and wage workers who must work to live is essentially a status
category, broadly representing income differences, not a true class. Granting
higher status has been a major tactic of social control, raised to an
ideological weapon to mute conflicting class interests by making the
affluence of a few the aspirations of many. In fact, the true middle class is
more and more an insignificant segment of the population.
The great mass of the white collar workers, clericals, service people,
teachers and professionals are underpaid, exploited and profoundly bored by
the daily dullness of their routines. They comprise the majority of the US
work force at home. They cling to the image of respectability that once
separated the old middle class from the mass of blue collar workers. Their
consciousness must be changed. The interpenetration of women's
consciousness, youth consciousness, and Third World national identity are
great channels through which their class consciousness —as workers opposing
their class enemy— can be irrigated and made fertile.
As imperialist crisis deepens, the entire fabric of social control is
tightened and becomes more severe.
Law-arid-order and the propaganda barrage to instill capitalist
values all intensify. The cultural crisis created, however, spills out in
rebellion, in resistance to alienating work, and in revolution. Revolutionary
constituencies will form along lines of cultural cohesion as well as along class
lines. Cultural identity can be an important element in the process of
revolutionizing mass groupings. This has been seen in national liberation
movements, and also to some degree in the women's movement and the
youth movement.
There are broad social movements developing and growing in the
US. We have experienced, in the last decade, a tremendous upsurge of
anti-imperialist consciousness and a severe breakdown of the established
institutions of power and cultural control. .All of this affects the
consciousness and social/political direction of the working class and provides
important new openings for revolutionary organizing.
117
BLACK AND OTHER THIRD WORLD PEOPLE IN THE US
Black and other Third World people inside the US make up
oppressed nations, subjugated peoples. The oppression of Third World
peoples takes many of the same forms as the imperialist control of people in
colonies in Africa, Asia or Latin America.
THE BLACK NATION
The Black nation in the US is huge —the second largest Black
nation in the world. It is a nation formed out of distinct common history.
The Black revolution is rooted in the cultural identity, common oppression
and resistance which synthesizes two realities: the African who was stolen to
this country, and the slave and descendents of slaves who built it.
The struggles of Black people in this generation have shaken racist
power and culture to the heart of the empire, because the colonized status of
Black and Third World peoples inside the heartland of imperialism is the
foundation of the economy and cultural structure of the US.
The Black struggle for self-determination is the strategic leading
force of the US revolution, forged from a centuries-long tradition of
resistance and revolt in the face of counterattack by the club, the cattle
prod, the gun and the lynch rope.
From the clandestine organizations of the earliest slavery days,
through mass uprisings, the open carrying of self-defense weapons, to
guerrilla combat, the Black movement has historically raised the level of the
whole struggle.
The state has imposed the necessity, liberation movements in other
countries have helped point the direction. By fighting for control over their
communities, schools, jobs and their future as a people, Black people also
push forward the overthrow of the existing power relations in the entire
society.
Like any movement, the Black struggle grows by qualitative leaps
and thru periods of building and regrouping of forces. Organized struggles in
local areas and the ongoing day-to-day battles of Black people are often not
as visible as the actions and rebellions of a high-tide period. But they are
urgent and necessary in the development of a people's movement. The
Black movement today embraces the bursti rig-forth of revolutionary Black
art and literature, the battles for land and political power in the rural South,
consistent organized support for African liberation, the ever-increasing
organization and militancy of Black women, ideological debate and study.
Black political conventions in Gary and Little Rock have attempted to
develop unifying strategies and direction; Black prisoners have opened a
determined front behind the bars; armed struggle against police power has
continued in the cities, Always the Black movement persists, finding new
forms to meet new conditions and new hardships —tenacious in the people's
fight for liberation.
118
INSTITUTIONS OF RACISM
They call us bandits, yet every lime mos! Black people pick
up our paychecks we are being robbed. Every iime we walk
into a store in our neighborhood we are being held up. And
every lime we pay our rent the landlord sticks a gun into our
ribs.
Assata Shakur (Joanne Oiesimard)
Racism is a weapon at the command of tin; ruling class, deliberately
fashioned into a culturally sanctioned inslitui ion, written into law, and
enforced by all the power of conscious custom and the state.
Ail primary national institutions corporation, government, social
services and organized labor are under 1 00/t effective white oppressive
control. Black peopie as a group do not control their schools, their jobs or
national policy. Despite all the state's propaganda, Black people have not
been "incorporated" into the upper, or even middle, level* of the IS social
structure.
In fact, the conditions of life for ninny Rbek people have worsened
over the iast ten years. During the Jasi decade, the differential between the
wages of Black and white workers has increased, segregation in the schools
has increased, drug addiction has become an epidemic. The annual sales of
General Motors - S30 billion equals the purchasing power of the entire
Black population.
Institutionalized racism is mainlined and perpetuated over the
generations by the schools, the unemployment e\clc, the drug trade,
immigration laws, birth control, the army, the prisons.
Black and Mexican and Puerto Rican and Asian labor has been
essential in building this country. The labor of Third World people cleans the
streets, the floors, hauls the heavy loads, cooks the food.
Last hired, first fired, the inicmp.loym.ent rate among Black people
in the cities is four times that of whites and the unemployment among Black
youth is now expected to exceed 30%. The high rate of Black
unemployment reduces i})e effects of depression cycles on the rest of the
population arid encourages competition instead of solidarity.
As an example of [his relationship; General Motors announced on
January 2, 197'1, that about 1500 workers- would be laid off at its Linden,
New Jersey plant because of ihe "energy e r i -• ; s . ' " The layoffs were pari of a
total of over 86,000 GM workers laid off :a. H:it imie nuiioo-w'de. Lnion
officials said that 60% of the worker;- beiny; hi;\ off indefinitely at Linden
were Black people, Puerto Kicans and women Skilled workers, mostly
white, were shoved back onto [lie assembly lines.
Third World women arc the lowest paid and in [he ie;ist. skilled jobs
in the country. Black women make up half the houscho^ workers —in other
people's bouses. They suffer the triple jeopardy of -ex, race- and poverty.
Black women cam less than half of what white men earn: they are
confronted by an infant and maternal rnor'aiiiy vale winch is twice that
among wdiil.es. There is no low-cost, daycare, doc to eui backs in welfare and
health programs.
119
The city is becoming Third World territory. Third World people are
a majority in 50 of the largest cities. Where they are a large minority (New
York, Chicago, Houston. Detroit), the public school populations are often
more than 50% Third World. Much of the white population has moved to
outer areas and to the suburbs. The cities do not represent, govern, serve,
educate or support their population.
An army of occupation prowls the streets of Black communities.
Sometimes, they patrol in the name of the welfare of the community. But
last year, half the murders of civilians by police —including several eiiildren—
were Black neople. In New York City alone, 53 Black people were shot and
killed by police in 1973. From 1968-1972, there were over 100 "legal"
murders oi Black revolutionaries in the US.
The Black community has paid a tremendous price in the loss of
leaders like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Free! Hampton,
Jonathan and George Jackson, Bobby Hutton, Zayd Shakur.
Black people are more likely to get arrested, to get long prison
sentences, to be refused parole, to be beaten and killed. The rulers are setting
up a unified fascist infrastructure with identity cards, federal training and
arming of police forces. Academic apologists preaching biological inferiority,
such as William Shockly, fabricate the justifications for forced sterilization
of Third World women.
These are attacks on a people as a whole. The heroin epidemic, a
countenusurgency weapon and product of the high profits of the
mn:rnalio(ial drug trade, is a form of genocide against a whole generation of
Black youth. In the name of a cure, methadone is replacing heroin but serves
the same purpose when controlled by the state —debilitation thru addiction
with the added benefit of increased control.
A measure of the genocidal cost to Black people of imperialist rule
is their life expectancy, today fully ten years less than whites. That means
that nearly 300 million years of life are being stolen from Black people in
the US today.
The courts are machines for administering the penalties of .vhite
rulers to Black victims. The prisons are living tombs. They function as a
major institution of economic and political control over the Black nation
—the rnling-class safety valve for the rebels, for the alienated. Prison acts as a
control or. the. critical mass on the streets, out of work, angry. There are
more Black men in prison than in colleges. Behavior modification techniques
are now in wide-spread use in the prisons as an attempted "final solution" to
the "problem" of rebellion and righteous anger.
You will find no class or category more aware, more
embiUered, desperate or dedicated to the ultimate remedy
—revolution. The most dedicated, the best of our kind
—you'll find them in the Folsoms, San Quentins and
Soiedads,
George Jackson
120
I n.dfr conditions of ma\irmun rep ression Black
prisoners have managed !o create an important center of
resistance. They are orjinnjzHi£. studviug, leaching each
other, and a number of white prisoners who have joined with
them, the politic? and skills of revolution. The prison struggle
is a microcosm of the revolutionary process, combining
evmed resistance, mass rebellion, political education
collective?, cultural workshops, prison union-, dav-to-clay
resistance. Since the liberal iun of Attic.u in September. I «-.» T 1 .
hundreds of prisons around the country have been held under
seige by prisoners. The prison movement, the fruit of terrible
material conditions and torture, has produced ;>, heroic
resistance and ha:s given birth to many great leaders.
**.?#**:;* dj,A*r; * '*
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Black Culture, Black Power
This is the era of national liberation. Black people recognized this
early and identified v/ith it: MalcuJm X named US imperialism as the
"common enemy"; Black people welcomed Fidel to Uarlcm in 1961; the
Black movement was tin- fii-st in this country to chaliege Israel's right to
Palestine: SNCC organized early resistance against the draft and in solidarity
with the Vietnamese; Martin bather King shook the country with his
denunciation of the [IS war in. Vietnam: Muhammed Ah was another teacher
in his principled. resistance to the cr'.-.ft.
A grassroots movemetd o! ::dfura! pride and national unity began to
reclaim Fslack history, to cneoiiv; .■■;.:-. collective consciousness and solidarity.
The slogan and feeling that "Black is Beautiful" arose everywhere among
Black people. The oppressor society has waged war against Black culture by
121
commercialization, by trying to subvert it, by encouraging the form and
repressing the substance. But a people's culture persists and takes newforms;
Black cultural identity has drawn new strength from the progress and
determination of liberation movements in Africa. In 1973, over 150,000
Black people marched in support of their sisters and brothers on African
Liberation Day.
The political form of the national movement became the demand
for Black Power.
Black Power is a revolutionary demand, a demand for freedom and
self-determination. It has meant struggle for control of community
institutions like the schools, hospitals, daycare centers, and demands for land
and political power in the cities. It has taken the form of spontaneous mass
rebellion and armed organization. The demand for Black Power has not been
Each battle for power is a process of relentless struggle and
mobilization. Black parents in Ocean Hill- Brownsville have been fighting for
community control of their schools for over five years. The United Black
Workers at the Mahwah, New Jersey Ford Motor Plant have led wildcat
strikes against the company and have done painstaking organizing since 1968
in their battle against white supremacy in the UAW. This kind of persistent
work and sacrifice is the essence of the continuing struggle for Black Power
and liberation.
Support for Self -Determination
Black and Third World people's right to determine the direction of
their struggle is undeniable. Self-determination means the right of an
oppressed people to seize an 1 organize their future and the future of their
children.
We support Black and Third World people's right to
self-determination, including the right to secession. There is nothing sacred
and certainly nothing historically just about the present fifty-state
government or the present boundaries of the US.
To argue, as some do, that Black liberation must wait upon the
industrial proletariat or the socialist revolution of the whole US, is both false
and racist. In practice, this position demands that Black people wait, that
they follow an op press or -nation timetable for liberation. It ignores the fact
that empires get broken down m different ways; by wars and occupation, by
revolt of external and internal colonies, by disintegration and internal rot
and combinations of all these.
Whatever decisions Black people and other oppressed peoples make
in exercising this right to self-determination, white revolutionaries and
anti-imperialists have a very clear-cut responsibility to support these
decisions once they arc arrived at. This doesnotmean to support only those
choices one approves of, nor only those that can be worked out by reforms
within the existing form of the US —"one nation, under god, indivisible."
Support for the right to self-determination is a principle and a
prerequisite to successful revolutionary movement in the oppressor nation.
122
NATIVE AMERICANS
Native Americans have renewed their long history of resistance with
a power, militancy and determination which is an example for all struggles.
The Indian struggle is a cultural resurgence which involves the whole people
as wreU as a political fight for dignity and survival. The heroic occupation of
Wounded Knee was part of a fabric of audacious action which has shaken the
country in recent years; the Native American take-over of Alcatraz Island,
the fight of the Pit River Indians in California to keep their land, the
Nisqually and Puyallup struggles in Washington State for their fishing rights,
the whole series of meetings, gatherings and protest called the Trail of
Broken Treaties, which led to the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
headquarters in Washington, D.C. in 1972.
Native Americans have survived all attempts at cultural, economic
and political genocide. They have made it clear that their battle continues
here and now and they have shattered the white-man's myth that Indian
culture and resistance died with the 1^90 Wounded Knee massacre.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs is a chief enemy of Indian people, a
colonial administration which determines the lives of Native Americans. The
BIA runs all Native American schools; all elected tribal leaders must be
approved by the Interior Department or the BIA; the BIA must sanction any
Indian land sales, leases or wills: the BIA officials argue in favor of corporate
land-grabs on the spurious grounds that the sales revenues will bring the
tribes prosperity. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency which serves the
interests of the US rulers —its aim is to administer the continued rip-off of
Indian land and resources.
The BIA has made it policy to refuse aid to the hundreds of
thousands of Indians who have left the reservations and settled in the urban
centers. The American Indian Movement (AIM) was born out of the struggles
of these urban Indians against police brutality and impossible living
conditions.
Conditions on Native American reservations are a further
indictment of this system: life expectancy is 43 years, infant mortality runs
three times as high as the rest of the US, one-half of all Indian students never
graduate from the poorly-serviced, rundown, racist BIA school system. BIA
schools don't leach Native American languages, and vilify the heritage and
culture of Indian people. Reclaiming [he Native American past is one of the
basic elements of the Indian struggle today.
The destruction and theft of Native American land has continued.
Northern Cheyenne and Crow people in Montana are faced with the plans of
major coal companies like Peabody to stripmine their territory and build a
massive industrial complex. Lumber companies on the West Coast have
bought hundreds of thousands of acres of Indian land in the last few years
—purchases arranged thru the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Many of the resource
exploitation projects underway in the Canadian north, like the huge James
Bay hydroelectric project in Quebec, are being developed on land which still
belongs to Indian and Eskimo people. Ecological devastation, accompanied
by loss of community and an inability to maintain tribal ways, are the results
of these land grabs by major corporations and governments. The fight to save
their land and their eight to use it, remains a fundamental part of the lives of
Native Americans.
123
One of the most important current Indian battles surrounds the US
prosecution of Ehe Wounded Knee liberators. Over 300 defendants, including
the leadership of AIM, arc being charged with felonies. Trials are taking place
throughout South Dakota and in Minnesota. A major political point at the
trial, as at the Wounded Knee occupation, is that the government has broken
the 1868 Treaty with the Oglaia people. The Oglalas rightfully demand that
this treaty, which proclaims their sovereignty as a people, be respected and
upheld. Support the Wrounded Knee freedom-fighters.
THE CHICANO STRUGGLE
The Chicano movement grows out of the struggle of ten million
oppressed people who live inside the US, mostly in the Southwest, just as
the Black nation has been denied its true history, official history has tried to
deny the real accomplishments and irrepressible resistance of the Chicano
people.
What's called the "Southwest of the US" is in reality "El Norte",
the vast borderland of Mexico robbed in the Mexican-American War of 1848.
The Mexican people, La Raza. are an Indo-hispano people (mestizo). They
have strong Indian roots reaching to the original inhabitants of the Americas,
Legend has it that the Aztecs originated in this region, called Aztlan —the
spiritual homeland of La Raza.
The struggle to reclaim Chicano land was dramatically renewed in
1967 by the Land Grant Movement in New Mexico. The attack on the Tierra
Amarilla Courthouse in June, 1967, was a guerrilla attack against a domestic
agency of colonialism. For many Anglos, this raid produced the first real
consciousness of the Chicano people's historical and legal claim to the land
of the Southwest.
This Anglo -occupied territory has been developed largely thru the
slave-like exploitation of Mexican labor. Chicanos are forced into the most
arduous and hazardous jobs at low wages but are fighting back. The
dedicated struggle by the farmworkers to win union recognition is now
threatened by the alliance between the Teamsters Union and the growers
—carried out with violent attacks and sweetheart contracts. This move is a
major attempt to defeat the UFWU and break its popular base. Chicana
women have just won a hard fought two-year strike for union recognition
against the Farah Clothing Company in Southern Texas,
Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens enter the US illegally
every year. They are hired for agricultural, industrial and service jobs at
wages often below the US minimum wage, without access to social services
and welfare. Employers try to use immigrant workers to depress wages and
break strikes of Chicano workers. The conditions that cause this immigration
are a result of US domination of Mexico's economy; US companies inside
Mexico pay workers S2 to $3 a day, reap up to 60% profit on investments,
leaving Mexico "underdeveloped". Unemployment in Mexico, by some
estimates, is up to 48%, Resistance to US imperialism in Mexico has
intensified greatly in the past year —including a guerrilla kidnapping of the
US Consul in Guadalajara, bombings of large US corporations in Mexico,
destruction of unsafe farm labor buses in Mexicali.
Inside the US, the Mexican immigrant workers are treated with
124
racism and brutality. They suffer unsafe bus transport with frequent
accidents and death, phony imprisonment resulting in coerced labor, and
periodic attacks and roundup* by the US Immigration and Naturalization
service.
These roundups of "illegal" immigrants are a form of police terror
against the entire Chicano community. For example, in the summer of 1973,
11.000 people were rounded-up within the Los Angeles area and deported.
There is no judicial process for "aliens'* and in the barrio, brown skin is
"probable cause*' for harassment and arrest. There were widespread
community protests and demonstrations against these fascist measures.
The police occupy the barrio. In addition to general harassment,
they attempt to terrorize the people with periodic murders of unarmed
Chicanos. A related strategy for destruction is police-protected importation
of drugs into the barrio. In response to police terror, there have been
militant mobilizations of the people —youth organizations, community
support for police victims, concerted efforts to drive drug pushers out of the
community. In 1970 and 1971, an underground Chicano group in Los
Angeles carried out a series of guerrilla bombings against school, police and
corporate targets.
The oppressor systematically attacks the culture, language and
history of the Chicano people. The concern for a truthful Chicano education
for the children is a center of the struggle. There have been militant high
school rebellions in Denver, Chicano school walkouts in L.A., fights for
bilingual education and for Chicano history and culture throughout the
Southwest. Pride in La Raza is strong, Chicano art and poetry are flourishing
in the barrio.
At the height of the Vietnam War, Chicanos were hit by
disproportionately high draft calls and casualty rates —coerced to fight
against sisters and brothers in Vietnam. Resistance was high. The Chicano
Moratorium became the leading anti-war force in Los Angeles. Their August,
1970 demonstration drew 50,000 people who fought back militantly when
the police attacked and killed three Chicanos.
The oppression of Chicanos is deep and their resistance is extensive.
Anglos have borrowed and benefitted from Chicano culture, skills, labor and
struggles. The liberation struggle of La Raza is critical to creating a humane
society in the US. We have a responsibility and a human need to learn about
and actively support the Chicano struggle for self-determination.
125
THE RISING OF WOMEN
The women's movement is rooted in the common oppression of
women. It is built on women's continuous resistance to sexism and is the
granddaughter of the organized struggles of women 120 years ago. It is a
popularly-based movement, imbued with a unique spirit and the fierce
beauty of masses of women actively claiming our power and our futures. It
contains the powrer to transform and become a leading force in our
revolution.
THE CONDITION OF WOMEN
The subjugation of women is intrinsic to imperialism. Male
supremacy is given concrete form in the family, in the wrork force, in the
social institutions. Sexism is perpetuated and enforced by the culture and
ideology of imperial society. So basic is the oppression of women to the
functioning of this system that while many women can improve their
circumstances within the system, we cannot win full collective liberation
without overturning the entire structure of imperialism.
Home and Family
The modern male-run nuclear family, wrhen we tear away the veil of
sentimentality, is the basic unit of capitalist society. Capitalism and the
modern family matured together historically, feeding each other's
development. In the family, women both reproduce the labor force and
begin the socialization process of the new generation, which is essential to
the productive system and the functioning of society. Women bear the major
responsibility for the nurturing, health and education of families. These are
treated like personal problems, yet they are necessary tasks, fulfilled at
minimal cost and effort to the imperialists,
Housework is hard work, done atone, but it is denied any social
value and it is not paid for in any formal way.
It is paid in barter: consumer comfort, a sense of economic
security, status.
The individual capitalist family structure is a wasteful social form,
not healthy for children to grow up in, a trap for women, It is a sanctioned
form for sexual exploitation and a hypocritical double standard. The family
breeds competitiveness among us, allows no future to women with grown
children, and demeans old women, separating them from the life of the
community.
Yet in a hostile, competitive society such as this one, the family is
for many Third World and poor people the only center of community, of
collective survival, a refuge. Until other forms can growr and develop, the
family will remain necessary as well as intolerable. There are many families,
an increasing number, headed by women. The ability of single mothers to
work and raise and care for children and maintain a household is a
monument to women's strength and determination.
126
Women work both inside and outside the home. Having so many
unemployed and underemployed women as a reserve of labor is a necessity
to modern monopoly capital. Women are available to be exploited in case of
war or some other change in the economic situation. Women are a
comparatively skilled group, but because of the myth that most women who
work are "secondary breadwinners" we work for lower pay and are neither
organized nor trained.
Over 40%, of the work force is women, and over 40% of women
work. Women work mainly in service trades and clerical work, and those of
us who work in production work mostly in semi-skilled jobs in textile,
garment and culinary trades —the traditional work of women. Although
getting out of the homes gives women a place of socialized contact and
some independence, it also compounds our oppression. Women's pay
averages three-fifths that of men. Of the 34 million women in the work
force, little more than four million are members of unions. Women workers
who are organized are mostly in unions notorious for white male control,
There are no maternity-leave benefits and no daycare facilities. The lowest
paid workers in US society are Black and Third World women.
Government Policies
Women are oppressed and controlled by government agencies and
are the immediate victims of economic crisis. The Department of Health,
Education and Welfare (HEW), for example, directly affects the lives of
millions of women and their families. HEW is the largest domestic arm of the
government, comparable in size and function only to the Defense
Department.
HEW is a classic institution of male supremacy, built on the
oppression of women, children and old people. It is typical of the male
monopoly of power: Caspar Weinberger, known as Cap-the-Knife for his
budget cuts, makes $60,000 a year as head of HEW. He is a Nixon-man and a
leech.
The brunt of HEW policies falls on women. Rockefeller and Reagan
have been running model HEW programs to force as many people off welfare
as possible, especially AFDC. Welfare amounts to government enforced
malnutrition: people are maintained below subsistence. Today 45% of all
city families headed by women live in poverty —by official standards that
means improperly nourished. Five million women in the US are medically
indigent, face undiagnosed and untreated illness. Threatened with losing the
few crumbs of welfare, women are coerced, for economic and racist reasons,
into sterilization programs. Last year, HEW financed between 100.000 and
200,000 sterilizations through medicaid and special family planning clinics.
If you are Black or poor or old or a women who is a head of a household,
you are directlv affected by HEW programs. They control your money and
rob you of your dignity and your privacy as a condition of aid.
In certain ways, HEW is to poor women like the Bureau of Indian
Affairs is to Native American people, It claims to be the giver of life's
necessities —but under the guise of providing social services, it functions to
control and contain us,as a safety valve against crisis and revolt. HEWr is really
the Department of Illness, Ignorance and Wretchedness.
127
The Culture of eiexlsm
Sexism is enforced and perpetuated by ihc imperial c;nii.ujrc-. Prom
r'.h, v ^nifi'i arc tai.:ght to think of ourselves as weak in bod\ and mind,
;.ssi\c, second-rate, dependent objects. The organizaficm of society teaches
ml reinforces the inferiority or' women, ib.ru schools we are channeled and
seated to prepare i'rjr marriage and sex-segregated iuhs. denied a '"nl!
nroTntiom Later these same schools blame mothers far jd!t ''failure" of
■i.Ue-en ::u h"am to read. The media portrays women as eimawdieaded, sexy
;.■:■ addo^ed consumers. Older -a omen are shunted asioas coped, ridiculed
-out on irom useiUM%or.K ann e^ati
ianghi: that our b'lolofrv is onr ale-tin
w:tlnn narro
v. confines in i idi'ili c.
are conditioned to
a;!"V ;'()(■: as SCXUal
r.S and renrortneers. Distorted and comer: iiive standard.- of beauty arc
over a who.ie svstem ol se\na; onirdhiea tie::. \\
;ve ;n an
o iada cnTurc. where women arc demed eonu o! of our bodies where
\ J,-' repression and faheos ^o hand ;o ban;: ivul prosi'dution and sex.ual
■ipioitfiiioii.. aleu arc taught to use women.
■ die underside of this ohjeefifiaahuj] is rape -a massive, brutal
stem of -error oeroeba led on women b-~ mm, ilosi' rases are: nor rrnorted
! L ■ .
the statistics are far lower than the roaliiy, bui athmks on women
msfiinte the fastest prowiiiig category of crime, in the 1 :;■. 'i h.e paralyzing
■"r of rape and sexual abuse, fanned bv media and pou-e v, amines, adds up
an i.;nofiK;ial curfew for women.
The oppression of women pervar's the -id/nod value:' of the whole
ana'.y. "mm are alienated from children and from herein emotion. Women
e L.oi otf from one another, threatened and competing, dexism is a form of
: lion M ecnriiiioiiina which enables the -rcstem to e\nioi: even- one.
THE WOMEN'S MOYE.YIRM-
has reaehed into e
i re women'? movement nas r
potential and chailcjadrie; ou
-ubju
raooa
m, awakening
ievemeuts are
an
Reclaiming our heritage. Women are reconstructing the buried truth
about women, weaving together the real history of women's contributions,
rebellions and defeats. We are tearing apart the lies of docility and placing
ourselves back in history. Unearthing knowledge of the past has led to a
rediscovery of witches and warriors, abolitionists and artists, ancient myths
and common women, labor organizers and healers.
Breaking the chains of self -hatred, self-denial, and despair.
Feminism entered women's lives like a whirlwind and a blessing. It tlirew
lives into turmoil, marriages burst apart, long suppressed anger erupted in
painful everyday confrontations with sexism. Women's consciousness was
seized as the last hope for sanity. We took up the fight to define ourselves.
We are giving birth to ourselves.
Women liking women. Women have found one another and that has
made the biggest difference of all. We begin to learn from and teach each
other, to build on the commonality of our experience. Sisterhood does
not always come easily and we learn to fight for it.
Relations based on power preclude the realization of affection and
intimacy; they drain our strength and are fought on uneven terms. Mutual
and expressive sexuality is part of the human potential for liberation. This
has become a striving and a strength of the women's movement, in
relation ships between women and men, and in relationships between women.
Lesbianism has hven an affirmation of unity and a challenge to the
partnership of sexuality and domination. Women have opposed the
dominant culture's treatment of homosexuals —people who are harassed and
assaulted, denied employment and housing, raped and even murdered
because they don't conform to standard sexual roles and morality. Net ail
gay culture transcends the sexism of US life, but the independence of lesbian
sisters and the attempts of gay people to live according to their own
definitions represent an attack on sexist ideology which subjugates women.
We support the right of di people to live according to their sexual
preferences without discrimination or fear of reprisals.
Women's Culture
Women have traditionally been the guardians and transmitters of
culture, and women's liberation has loosened an explosion of writing, music
and art for, by and about women. Women's culture reflects and pulls
forward our collective aspirations. The creation of women's alternative
institutions —anti-sexist and pro-women— includes health clinics, daycare
centers, schools, newspapers^ communities. We are trying to raise children
without sex stereotypes, with new values; learning new skills; trying to deal
with the problems of mental health, aging and mutual survival.
Institutional Sexism. Sexism is carried by and perpetuated by the
culture and by individual men; these are often its most visible and blatant
manifestations. But underlying sexist culture is the systematic
institutionalization of male supremacy, The women's movement uncovered
and began to oppose and attack the institutions which concretize sexism.
Anti-sexist men. Sexism, which denies the humanity of women,
destroys the humanity of men. Men, too, are underslanding that sexism
makes them emotionally barren and culturally warped, In response ro the
challenge of women, many men have begun to make a commitment to
struggle against sexism, These allies are a victory of the women's movement,
129
They are an indication of the potential for further alliances with those in
struggle and with oppressed people everywhere.
TASKS FOR REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN
At this point, there is no widely -felt organized force of
revolutionary women; this has yet to be defined and built. This force is
necessary to realize the full potential of the uprising of women, to carry it
forward, to embody and fight for the collective interests of women.
We recognize the necessity of resisting and destroying the
anti-women institutions of society. We recognize that sexism and imperialism
are the enemy of all oppressed women, and that is our common ground. Our
goal is the development of a feminism which genuinely determines,
safeguards and defends the collective interests of women, and which points
in the direction of revolution. We need to build a revolutionary feminism.
Women are not isolated from the clashes and contradictions in US
society. These are reflected in the contradictions holding back the
development of a revolutionary woman's politics. Class privilege, racism,
liberalism and anti-militancy, if not met head on, will militate against the
development of revolutionary feminism and defeat the struggle for the full
freedom of women.
When the women's movement first began, its spontaneity and
openness was a great strength. We now have to raise the political questions,
struggle them out, and organize ourselves. Organization and leadership are
major weapons of revolution. We cannot afford to give them away because
of fear of elitism. Anti-elitism is destructive if its political content isn't
left-wing. We need to study, to have ideological debate among women who
work in many different facets of the struggle to create a new and
comprehensive analysis of women in society and in revolution.
Overcoming Class Privilege
God almighty made women;
the Rockefeller gang made ladies.
—Mother Jones
The women's movement grew up as a cross-class movement. The
strength of this lies in our recognition of the commonality of women,
exposing the shallowness of false middle-class consciousness, and making
alliances widely against our real enemies.
Ruling-class women who are committed to their class interests are
130
clearly enemies. They sustain and take part in the oppression of women
around the world. They are collaborators. Unless they renounee their
privileges and join the struggle they will always be the enemy.
Bourgeois feminism, in all its forms, has come to play a leading role
in defining the voice of the women's movement. Bourgeois feminism
—which is also feminism for white women- is the fight for individual
solutions to the oppression of women, even though it may be cloaked in very
radical language and the forms of liberation. Bourgeois feminism assumes
that the advancement of individual women to positions of power in the
society —on corporate boards of directors, for example- is somehow a
victory for women as a group. But career-making for some women is a fight
for privilege, and turns into a fight for the protection of that privilege from
poor and Third World women underneath. Often the "freedom" of upper
class women is based on having a Black women do her housework.
Imperialism is an old master at encouraging the creation of a bought-off
group to split, confuse and move against a people's movement. This is why
the Ford Foundation, big industry, and the police forces and FBI are
recruiting among women as well as investigating the women's movement.
We can build the women's movement among poor and working
women. The women's movement of the last five years has touched the
consciousness of millions of women and raised the possibilities of seizing
control over our lives, which is the first step into revolution. In this period of
growing social and economic dislocation, women are at the intersection of
the crises and will fight to survive.
Opposing Racism
In the past, I don't care how poor this white women was, in
the South she still felt like she was more than us. In the
North, I don't care how poor or rich this white women has
been, she still felt like she was more than us. But coming to
the realization of the thing, her freedom is shackled in chains
to mine, and she realized for the first time that she is not free
until I am free.
Fannie Lou Harner
There is a tradition of white women siding with Black and Third World
people, and a tradition also of turning against them. Women were the prime
movers in the best work of Reconstruction, but in the betrayal and
counterrevolution that followed, middle-class white women withdrew from
full solidarity with the Black struggle and contributed to the overthrow and
defeat of the Reconstruction movement. While Black men were lynched for
even looking at a white woman, the rape of Black women by white men was
institutionalized over hundreds of years. White women, raised on a pedestal,
were dehumanized and desexed: we were used and eomplicit, as well as
victims. These are historical realities which stand behind our dilemmas
today.
The colonized status of Third World women is enforced by society
on every level, even the level of self -conception. One of the most cynically
131
destructive attacks is the infamous Moynihan Report, issued in 1965 for
LBj's Great Society, This doctrine says that the Black family is pathological
(sick) because of the strength of Black women; that Black women are
responsible for the position of Biack men in society. These theories try to
divide the Black community against itself and breed self -hatred among Black
women. They have influenced the popular consciousness of a generation and
have been roundly denounced by Black women.
Third World women are organizing, in school struggles, union
struggles, welfare struggles -many in a national liberation context. Many
Third World women define their enemy as imperialism. They lead in welfare
and prison movements. They have much to teach us about who our enemy
is. international sisterhood, and how to strengthen a people to fight.
Racism is used against women, a form of counterinsurgency to
divide us. the velvet glove and iron fist. By exploiting our concern for our
families, the state convinces many white women that our main enemy is
Third World people. This is particularly powerful when our children are used
as a weapon. Women's fears are created and manipulated; real fear of rape is
turned into fear of Third World men by the press and the police; in truth,
most white women victims of rape are raped by white men.
Anti-sexist work is not necessarily anti-racist, or anti-imperialist.
Some women argue that we always fought for other people, now women are
fighting our own battles. Let us extend our sisterhood to the 100,000
women in Thieu's prisons, to the women in Palestinian refugee camps, to the
dispossessed women in Puerto Rico, and to the women in prison here. Let us
encourage the women who work against the Indochina War. Let us not
justify complacency in the name of women.
Militancy
Our movement will be self-defeating if we reject militancy as
"male'' and "macho/1 This detracts from the resistance of our sisters in the
past, denies the necessarily violent nature of the struggle, and is blind to the
courage of the wars for national liberation being waged against the US.
A eceptance of the status quo of imperialism means acceptance of
unprecedented violence.
There is a particular importance in women learning to fight. For us
-much the same as for women who join liberation struggles in Third Wrorld
countries —actually confronting the enemy and fighting in demonstrations,
acts of resistance or armed attacks is tearing off of the veil, a rejection of the
passivity and acceptance for which we are bred. Women fighters are
frightening apparitions to the enemy and examples for us.
Women play a particular role in the armed struggle which guerrillas
cannot well afford to ignore. Women are fierce fighters, out of our righteous
anger at oppression; but we also have to work hard to learn necessary skills
not naturally taught us. Women are careful fighters, and understand the need
to rid our fighting of ego: we also cannot let this strength turn into
conservatism. Women unite and center the revolutionary community,
mobilize the comrades to fight. This necessarily involves grasping the tools of
ideology and political struggle.
132
Insurgent Institutions
In building alternative institutions for women, we must not deceive
ourselves into thinking that our clinics or schools have solved the problem of
health care and education for the mass of women. We must be aware of who
they serve and who they don't. Alternative institutions must also become
insurgent bases for a fight against the mass social institutions, on behalf of
women at the mercy of hospital emergency rooms, public housing, food
stamp lines, and public schools.
Without power, reforms can be turned into weapons against us.
Reforms which were fought for every inch of the way —such as public
schools, birth control, social security and trade unions— become their
opposite in the hands of the ruling class. We must make sure our victories are
not at the expense of our sisters. Women have fought for abortion reform, a
tremendous victory, but we have to fight to exercise control over the
burgeoning abortion business and find ways to make sure that poor women
can take advantage of this victory. Women have struggled long for safe
effective birth control, but we do not have control of our reproduction. Poor
and Third World women are routinely used for medical experimentation and
profit, subject to forced sterilization and unsafe "'family planning". We have
the obligation to fight to stop the wholesale geuoeidal use of sterilization
and population control against the women of bairn America.
Tt is only the reforms which we have fought for that make our lives
bearable; survival struggles around conditions of work, welfare, life, health
can weaken the enemy, expose his tricks, and win something real for us all.
Together these elements make up a good program of struggle.
But imperialism will never, can never, free al! women. Sexism will
not be destroyed until imperialism is overthrown. It is in the collective
interests of women to do this and take full part in building a socialist
revolution. We need power. Socialist revolution lays she foundation for the
liberation of women and begins dismantling the tenacious institutions of
sexism. The revolutionary movement, on its part, must embrace and support
the rising of women. There must a solid and irrevocable commitment made
to women's liberation. A revolution is not a moment in time. Old ideas
reassert themselves and have to be fought against. Revolution is a continuing
process.
133
THE YOUTH REBELLION
The revolutionary youth movement is a proud and beautiful thing.
It has made a significant contribution to revolutionizing this society. The
student movement engendered militancy and daring at an early stage of
struggle and has greater promise still.
Control of the cultural apparatus and value system is an essential
aspect of securing the home base for a world empire. Therefore, struggles
which expose, break-down and liberate people from this social structure are
very important and form a front line of the cultural revolution.
The cultural rebellion of youth has been a significant assault on the
controls of empire. At its best it actively carried the people of the US into
supporting the Vietnamese people's struggle for liberation and opposing the
war, and it has provided an arena of struggle against racism where victories
have been won. It produced a movement committed to communal and
collective life-stvles. sexual liberation and anti-materialist values.
YOUTH CULTURE
The revolutionary youth movement grew out of the contradictions
within the oppressor nation society. It grew up at a unique moment: the
height of affluence.
Modern US society, organized for the business of imperialism, is a
place where young people face particular oppression. Schools, the family,
the media all attempt to socialize us into a competitive, acquisitive,
individualized system. The end result is intended to be competitive sexual
roles, marriage, and alienating, humiliating work as functionaries for
imperialism.
In US society, life is alienating. Sexuality is stripped of its
expressive and loving qualities, and institutionalized in marriage, prostitution
or pornography. Sexuality is denied its human content, and is offered for
sale. Art, too, is a commodity, something to be bought and sold. So are
games and sports —no longer human exercises for the fun and development
of people, but big business, packaged and programmed. The alienation of life
is an ongoing explosive condition of our times.
Youth oppression is organized and institutionalized. Young people
are channeled and coerced in schools; misled, miseducated, misused. Schools
have become alien from the real process of learning about the world or how
to use things. Schools are often huge minimum-security prisons where we are
held and controlled for large parts of our lives. In schools we are taught to
respect arbitrary authority, Lo follow orders, and to compete with sisters and
brothers. The education industry plays the additional role of keeping huge
numbers of young people out of the shrinking job market, thereby propping
up the faltering system. Schools in many ways are the work places of youth.
Youth are rebellious against meaningless work and face the
problems of less skill and seniority, low pay scales, dirtier work.
Unemployment and underemployment are massive among youth; young
people are used as a reserve pool of low-skilled labor.
134
Police, the courts, and prisons are increasingly geared to control of
the young. Out of work, out of luck, we are more likely to be involved in
minor crime. The prison population is increasingly a young population.
A large segment of youth has rejected the traditional values of
society and has struck off in search of a better way, a more fulfilling life,
more humane and dignified social relations. Young people have become
commited to collective work styles, to communities where work and life are
integrated, where respect for community and culture and environment are
priorities. We are learning to be open to other people's cultures and have
borrowed from the music, stories and ways of other peoples to enrich our
own.
The youth movement did not materialize out of thin air but in
response to imperialism. It united around and gathered momentum in the
fight against the war in Vietnam. It declined when the troop withdrawals and
the end of the draft removed the most compelling elements bringing young
people into struggle. The killings at Jackson State and Kent State during the
protests against the invasion of Cambodia scared many people who had never
experienced the wrath of imperialism so directly. People were confronted
with the ruthlessness and arbitrariness of repression. The culture produced a
group of people, nomads, communal semi-hustlers, sharing a certain sense
of being alien to and in opposition to the US imperial way of life.
At the same time, this culture benefited from the affluence of
empire, and in some part removed itself from engaging against the
perpetrators of empire by escaping from the institutions of society.
The cities are the front line in many ways, but the importance of
work done in rural areas should not be underestimated. Potential exists for
organizing among the rural poor. Unity can be built with Native Americans,
Southern Blacks, Appalachians, the rural Chicano and poor white
population, for the redress of the oldest and some of the crudest crimes of
imperialism.
One edge of youth culture consisted of politically active people:
organizers, embattled artists, people's musicians, free schoolers, mothers and
fathers and children of communal families. What has happened to this large
grouping of people as the fat of affluence has dissolved over the last three
years?
Some have become small business men, and have taken on the
material characteristics of their parent's generation. But most have gone to
work, or are on welfare, or are even maintaining a rural subsistance through
small farming or crafts. Many live at the edge of getting by -women alone
with small children, people eking out a living in groups. To the extent that
communities survive among this group of people, they are real bases for
organizers, not necessarily revolutionary, but open. This group of people
constitutes a de classe sector —increasingly proletarianized— whose
experience in political work or in organizing alternatives can be a valuable
contribution to our movement.
There are serious weaknesses in youth culture. It is imbued with
the sexist values of the dominant culture that bore it. It mainly looks to
male heroes for models. It has failed to genuinely meet women's needs or to
make a wholehearted commitment to fighting sexism,
Sometimes trying to build cultural alternatives has become a
substitute for struggle, or has collapsed into hip capitalism. "Do your own
thing" —at first an advocacy to add your own unique contribution to the
community effort, has become a slogan for individualism, splitting apart, and
undermining the solidarity that has been built.
In many ways, the culture has withdrawn to rest on its privileges,
dissociating from active opposition to racism and from active identification
with Black and Third World people. A flippant attitude toward
consciousness-expanding drugs is separated from the whole picture of
deathly and pacifying drugs pumped into insurgent communities. The
prohiems of heroin, methadone, alcohol and pills have not been dealt with.
Although young people experience police oppression day-to-day, police
power directed against Black and Third World people is not eombatted.
Rarely do alternative institutions organize to meet the needs Gf the Black
community, Third World children, the old.
The best of the culture is realized through the process of struggle
itself —this is what creates unity of opposition, builds anti-racism, breathes
life into the sense of community and makes our communities insurgent.
Revolutionaries must embrace the explosive content of the
profound alienation young people experience in US society, and struggle
with and change its accomodations to imperialism. It is our view that the
youth movement is a force that has and will continue to affect the
consciousness of the working-class and the society as a whole. We must
approach the youth movement with a consciousness of the great
contributions made by students, Gls and other young people in the
anti-imperialist struggles of a decade.
THE ARMED FORCES
The army is one of the central oppressive institutions of youth.
Young men are forced into the armed forces because of lack of education
136
■■'■K,-i-.v
tGZc
■;ii ploy me nt opportunities. Once in the army, we are faced with the
:?•';. and most direct forms of discipline and class oppression.
The rebellion in the armed forces comes from the same causes that
Wd young Third World people and white youth to rebel in other
iitions of US society. Gls have raised deep questions about the right of
: to rule, of the armed forces to command, of the supposed right to
i-c and kill women, children and men in Vietnam. The realities of
'.ng such a vengeful yet totally unjust war as the war in Vietnam broke
: riUiiiy institutional and cultural forms that have kept the armed forces
he.:1 as a so-called "proud fighting unit."
There has been GI rebellion within the armed forces during every
y.r of expansion, but the defeat of US forces in Vietnam combined with
rowing Black rebellion at home accelerated the opposition into a full
The justification for war grew thin: no one wanted to die in this
■.Ve ^erased to fight and burned our draft cards, left the country, and
Pirated against the war. Instead of going on patrol, many units would
out a few hundred yards and sack out for ihe night A generalized
'■\i'y;> from military discipline developed. Imperialism needs willing
::-;. hui rewer and fewer could be found.
mm za . w^
:j&
3&S
The resistance and solidarity of Black Gls set ihe terms of the
and galvanized others. In the racist army5 Third World soldiers made
of die combat casualties. Slogans of resistance developed: "No
y ever called me nigger;" "Don't fight overseas for what you don't
iOirK:.
tacks on the brass, subversion of the rai'Sitary machinery, and
i?-;tsitions spread among Gls. Or, occasion, whole units refused to
■rfe
i ^
-both in Vietnam and in the US at the Democratic National
137
Convention in 1968. Thousands of young people who became the dedicated
enemies of imperialism were trained in weaponry and combat. Veterans who
came back to the US organized against the war and led a national campaign
against war crimes. One of the most dramatic moments in the anti-war
movement was in April 1971, when the Vietnam Veterans Against the War
threw away their war medals at the White House.
Veterans face chronic unemployment, inadequate medical
treatment, unjust benefit payments and drug addiction at home. Vets are
plagued by an oppressive discharge system which codes young men according
to the recommendations of the ruling brass. This system creates a blacklist
on the labor market against many returning veterans, especially those who
didn't toe the line.
The revolt in the army is anti -imperialist class struggle on the
highest level, led by Third World GIs but with many white working-class
people involved. This revolt involves cultural insubordination, political
education, direct action and mass participation in armed resistance and
sabotage. As a result we have arrived at a new political situation: the ruling
class can no longer confidently depend on the armed forces to do the dirty
work of empire in all parts of the world.
The great injustice of this system is that it leaves its potential
unrealized while maintaining scarcity for billions of people.
US society is corrupted by the values that necessarily
accompany piracy —racism, greed, competitiveness, brutality,
sexism, callousness. The ruling class calls the backward,
criminal aspects of culture into being and sets them into
motion, The society is the rat-race, marked by an anti-social
premium on individualism. There is a gtark poverty for
masses of people materially and culturally, a poverty in the
quality of life.
As imperialist crisis deepens, the entire fabric of social
control is tightened and becomes more severe.
Third World peoples in the US, and also women, youth and
members of the armed forces have shown the most consistent
initiative and practice as measured by the decisive
anti-imperialist struggle of this entire period: the war in
Vietnam. These groups have been the carriers of proletarian
internationalism for this time.
138
VI. AGAINST THE COMMON
ENEMY
This is a call to organize the people and to act. We must now apply
our analysis to our particular situation, mobilize the masses and fight. Our
goal for this period is to help build a mass anti-imperialist movement and to
build the armed struggle, the guerrilla forces. Legal and clandestine struggle
are both necessary: agitation and attack, peaceful methods and violent
methods, sometimes organizing the people step-by-step, and sometimes
taking a leap thru action to a new level. Mass work and armed struggle are
united in revolution: each needs to support and affirm and complement the
other. These are different fronts, interdependent and allied against the
common enemy.
Aboveground and underground, we face the same political
questions: Who do we organize '! How do we bring our politics to life in
practice ? How do we sustain the struggle ?
Our enemy is US imperialism, the enemy of all humankind. Our
goal is to attack imperialism's ability to exploit and wage war against all
oppressed peoples. Our final goal is thecompletedestruction of imperialism,
the seizure of the means of production and the building of socialism. To
create the conditions in which we can take the offensive, destroy the old
system and build a new life, we must weaken and at least partly destroy the
empire. The weakest points of empire lie in its control of the colonics, and
this is why Third World liberation is leading the struggle against imperialism.
We need organization. Activists are searching for direction -some
common ideas, strategy, and practice to unite around. It is frustrating and
crippling to individual revolutionaries and groups to have no unified impact
on history as it is being made. We all feel the need to work as part of a
whole, larger than ourselves, to see our individual contributions add up to
something meaningful. Organization unites, gives direction and breadth to
particular political work. Activists and militants want to build something
bigger, where activity leads to shared results, where masses of people can
organize their strength. Anti- imperialist organization is what is needed.
139
We believe that communist -minded organizers can take the
initiative now and lead. Move from small to large. Practice and hard work,
boldness and a willingness to intervene in every struggle, big or little. There is
room for lots of creativity in application and choice of work. Go to the
people. Organize and mobilize. Build the struggle. Head and study. Carry
your books. There is no substitute for practice in determining the
revolutionary path. Conditions arc developing more rapidly than is easily-
realized. This is not yet a program; rather it is an ideological foundation and
the tools for building agitational work,
GO TO THE PEOPLE
The US people entered the 70's weary of war, skeptical of
government leaders, uncertain about the future. Masses of people have been
torn away from imperial mythology, from the standard of male supremacy,
from allegiance to the state. In search of more drastic solutions to the
current social dislocations, people open to the possibility' of revolutionary
consciousness. The 70's bring inflation, recession, unemployment, the
chance of war, and crisis after crisis in the lives of millions here. We can
foresee a time of food riots, unemployment councils, tenant's anti-eviction
associations, neighborhood groups, anti-war organizations. The left must
organize itself to understand the continuous crises of our time and mobilize
the discontent into a force for freedom.
Organize poor and working people. Go to the neighborhoods, the
schools, the social institutions, the work places. Agitate. Create struggle.
Link up the issues that describe the system. Tell the truth.
We believe that radical teachers should work in schools in working
class neighborhoods, in community or junior colleges. Radicalize other
teachers, organize the parents, teach and encourage your students. Health
workers can choose hospitals and clinics in poor communities. Cultural
activists, street players, artists, writers should propagandize and relate to
poor and working people. Community-controlled and counter -institutions
should be made into insurgent bases.
Organize among youth. Organize among women. Communists
should play a big role in these movements, these popular upheavals which
spawned us. This is our strength. Revolutionize existing projects and
movements, analyze real situations, intervene with a revolutionary
anti-imperialist perspective.
Organize to survive. Support the people's right to food, adequate
shelter and decent health care. Oppose HEW attacks on women and the
poor. Fight to live.
Impeach Nixon and jail him for his major crimes. He is one of the
top criminals of the century, a warmaker, a lifetaker. His isolation and
exposed condition is the mirror-image of US defeat in Vietnam. Nixon
merits the people's justice.
jr^^iitftr* ************ Arii
140
POLITICS IN COMMAND
There are a thousand threads of forward motion in the social
explosion of our times. A thousand threads to untangle and engage. Find a
way for everyone to fight the enemy. Unite the anti-imperialists. There are
some politics that are necessary for successful activity: things to carry with
us in our work.
Internationalism
Revolutionaries are internationalists. Our job is to build
international class consciousness, to make connections among people. A
good program must synthesize —not separate- the struggles of Third World
peoples with our own: to uneover the relationship between Watergate and
the Vietnam War, to nourish our identification with the struggle of Cuban
women rather than our distinctness, to find the commonality between the
white worker and the unemployed Puerto Rican. A good program mobilizes
and teaches.
The rulers scapegoat Third World people for the failures of the
system. They say: "The American people are being deprived of their right to
oil by the Arabs;" "Welfare mothers, not the defense budget, are responsible
for higher taxes;" "Chilean socialism stole our copper mines." We cannot
allow the maintenance of a pacified sector of privileged workers here; rather
we can find ways to identify our interests with the interests of all oppressed
people everywhere and sharpen the class struggle.
Liberal,anti- internationalist slogans have been put forth throughout
the history of our movement: "You can only organize people around their
own interest," "Don't fight other people's battles," "Support for Third
World struggles is 'guilt' politics." These slogans encourage the belief that
oppression is individual and must be fought by small groups distinct from
and against other groups. These slogans assume that the individualism,
narrowness and fear that are a major part of the socializing process here
should be accepted by movement programs. They emphasize competition, a
short-term sense of the struggle, and feed racism and all kinds of chauvinism.
We think that organizers should oppose the liberal slogans with the
communist slogan: "Fight US imperialism, the common enemy."
How to move?
—Oppose nuclear war and US threat of nuclear war. Defeat nuclear
sabre-rattling.
—Oppose imperialist war and aggression wherever it occurs. Oppose
US armed intervention. Defend Indochina from future attacks. Get the US
out of the Mideast. Independence for Puerto Rico
—Also, watch for the quiet but sinister ways warfare is waged on
sisters and brothers in the Third World. Expose and oppose AID programs,
cultural and economic penetration, the multinational corporations,
population control. Don't let them sneak around.
—Oppose racism in practice. Racism is the main and most
consistent weapon for holding back the revolutionary struggle. Skin color
will be a brand to turn proletarians against one another until this brand is
decisively rejected by white folks. The oppressed nation of Black people is
the leading anti-imperialist force in our country. No doubt about it. History,
141
continuity, mililancy —even in hard limes. Black and other Third World
leadership hap, in recent years, been the most internationalist and the most
militant. Racism cuts us up, cuts us off from this leadership. All vestiges of
racist thinking or action among revolutionaries must be attacked in the most
fortliright manner. No quarter can be given to racism in our relations with
the people we are organizing, We must learn how to reject ami expose the
racism without rejecting the person. Represent solidarity with Third World
people whenever possible.
-Win a base of support for prison struggles and oppose attacks by
the state on Third World revolutionaries. The greater the resistance by the
people, the more widespread and successful, the greater will be the
repression from the state. We can prepare for future repression by planning
the next stage of advance and attack. Today people are confronted by
prisons, courts, military-injustice and racism, police brutality, spying on and
controlling of civilian life, the terror of rape, discrimination, channeling and
brainwashing. Does this constitute fascism or a threat of fascism? Again the
main tiling is the distinction between oppressor and oppressed nations. Third
World people have been living under fascist conditions for generations; at the
same time, the majority population feels it has some democratic rights wrorth
defending. These contradictory perceptions reveal something that is true:
fascism in the oppressor nation is the application here of the colonial policies
of empire. It is selective and partial. It has always been applied to Native
Americans, Black people, Puerto Ricans, Chicanes, the oppressed generally as
well as those who unite with the oppressed —radicals, reds.
Fascism in this country is not a challenge to those in power by
some more reactionary gang on the outside. Fascism is perpetrated on Third
World people from the seats of power: the Pentagon, the Congress, the White
House, the Supreme Court. In these places liberal and fascist tendencies
compete, but they also connive and conspire. Our strategy must be unity
against existing fascism for the liberation of all oppressed people. Imprisoned
fighters face the brunt of fascist repression and are a center of our struggle.
A solid bridge of communications, news, politics and support sustain sisters
and brothers under brutal isolation and torture, makes a difference in the
treatment of political prisoners and their chances of release. Connections
maximize the impact of prison politics as an essential and leading part of our
movement. Support Ruchcll Magee. Defend the Attica brothers.
-Like Dr. Du Bois said, "The problem of the twentieth century is
the problem of the color line.'" It's our view that white revolutionaries
should look toward building principled alliances, coalitions and working
relationships with Third World people when possible. Support for
self-determination can't be an excuse for failure to engage with Third Wrorld
revolutionaries in day-to-day work, A new practice should develop in which we
learn from, struggle with, but don't prejudge or attempt to direct Third World
freedom fighters. Full understanding and support for self-determination is
the basis for this kind of getting together. Win an understanding of the right
of oppressed peoples to determine their own destinies.
—Read Black and Third World publications. Understand the
richness of the movements, the current debates, the direction and growth of
struggles. Study .Malcolm and George Jackson. Learn from the great teachers.
142
WOMEN AND REVOLUTION
The women's movement has changed the consciousness of millions
of women, and the crises of US society are creating resistance and
revolutionaries among women every day. This is a good time to do a lot of
organizing among women, to bring the full scope of anti-imperialist and
revolutionary politics into women's lives. Storm the institutions which
oppress women. Direct our force against the men who control these
institutions.
—Support Assata Shakur, Marilyn Buck, Lolita Lebron and other
women in prisons. Demonstrate to free our sisters in the Saigon jails.
—It is our view that women working in revolutionary organizations
with men should organize themselves into women's groups, sections,
brigades, caucuses to build our solidarity, to oppose sexism, to reach out,
involve, organize among women and to strive together for the full liberation
of women,
—Sexism within the culture of the revolutionary movement denies
the full contribution of women and distorts political direction. We need an
anti-sexist revolution in this country to create the basis for a new society
which genuinely empowers women. The revolution must be fought for
women as well as by women.
—Sexism manifests itself in relationships among people, and must
be fought on this level too. Men must make a continuing commitment to
understanding and changing sexist ways. Criticism and self-criticism are our
tools for this struggle: fanshen, the turning over, transformation.
MILITANCY
A movement has no reason to exist if it doesn't fight. The system
needs to be overthrown; revolutionaries must prepare for that necessity at all
points along the way. Revolutionary movements must be contending for
power, planning how to contend for power, or recovering from setbacks in
contending for power. Certainly every movement must learn to fight
correctly, sometimes retreating, sometimes advancing. But fighting the
enemy must be its reason for being. We build a fighting movement.
143
Militancy stirs the imagination arid raises the vision of victory.
Militancy in a street demonstration, in a courtroom, in a rally, in a prison
takeover, is recognized and respected as an uncompromising statement. It is
a confrontation with the opposing system. Involving people in militant
action trains and teaches. It is both an example and a strategy. Militant
action is related to the understating that the struggle is not merely for
separate issues but is ultimately for power —necessarily including armed
struggle to defeat the oppressive forces of state. To leave people unprepared
to fight the state is to seriously mislead about the inevitable nature of what
lies ahead.
Some on the left dissociate mass struggle from revolutionary
violence and condemn any act of public militancy or armed struggle as
adventurist. This is characteristic of oppressor-nation movements where
violence is raised to a question of abstract principle, and the illusion is
fostered that imperialism will decay peacefully: "Violence turns people off,"
"It's too early," "Violence only brings down repression."
—The movement should argue for and explain armed action.
develop parallel strategies, openly support the thrust and political content of
revolutionary armed actions, claim and spread the message of struggle, help
create the "sea" for the guerrillas to swim in. Don't talk to the FBI. Resist
grand jury probes of revolutionary struggles. Laying the basis for armed
struggle is also the responsibility of mass organizers,
—From the very beginning of guerrilla action, mass armed
capability develops. Its spontaneity will be slowly transformed into the
energy of a popular armed force.
-Many levels of clandestine propaganda action can be carried out
which spread the consciousness of action and give people a way to learn.
Spray-painting, rip-offs of corporate files, blood on the murderers. We have
done these types of action ourselves, including stinkbombing a Rockefeller
appearance in N.Y.C. and doing the same to the mouthpieces of the Chile
junta when they travelled in the US alter the murder of Allende. Build a
people's militia,
—A successful movement needs to keep part of its organization
away from the eyes of the state. This should be part of the practice of every
revolutionary. The survival and continuity of the revolutionary movement,
of the activists and the supporters over a long period of time, depends on
having networks and resources not exposed to computer patterns, electronic
surveillance and infiltration of the repressive apparatus. The continued
existence of underground organizations shows this can be done.
—Building a capacity to survive over time is no substitute for
militancy now in our daily work. An uncompromising, confrontational
approach to political work is the best way to inspire the people, build
organization, and learn to fight.
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REVOLUTION
_ This is a deathly culture. It beats its children and discards its old
people, imprisons its rebels and drinks itself to death. It breeds and educates
us to be socially irresponsible, arrogant, ignorant and anti-political. We are
the most tec hnologie ally advanced people in the world and the most
politically and socially backward.
The quality of life of a Chinese peasant is better than ours. The
Chinese have free and adequate health care, a meaningful political education,
productive work, a place to live, something to eat and each has a sense of her
or himself as part of a whole people's shared historical purpose. We may eat
more and have more access to gadgets, but we are constantly driven by
competition, insecurity, uncertainty and fear. Work is wasteful and
meaningless and other people are frightening and. hateful. This is no way to
live.
Anti-imperialism is our cultural revolution. We must rescue
ourselves from the consequences of being the base area for imperialism -the
base area for war, piracy, rape and murder. In this reclamation process, we
come to a better understanding of our history and ourselves. This is not for a
small group but for millions of people. Much has happened in the world and
in the US to move this process along. Few people really believe anymore in
the great civilizing leadership role of the US. Few still think that capitalism is
the best of all possible ways to meet the economic needs of the world's
peoples, or that Black and Third World people are sub-human labor material
destined to support the more worthwhile activities of white supermen. Few
really believe that men will go on indefinitely monopolizing power in a
supremacist anti-women society. Stated simply, our strategy is to base
ourselves on the trends of change, to revolutionize and push them on, and to
intervene in everything.
Where do the US people look to learn about social revolution and
consciousness, struggle and purpose? A decade of resistance in Vietnam
demonstrated to highly ''developed" Westerners that we have everything to
learn from "underdeveloped" peoples, The revolutionary struggle is the
social form from which will deal with the crisis of imperialism in decline. We
learn from Third World people who resist US tyranny, with a unity born in a
sense of collective power and purpose. We learn from our own history and
examples of courage, struggle ant! communality which are here for us to
search out and celebrate.
Our movement must discard the baggage of the oppressor society
and become new women and new men, as Che taught. All forms of racism,
class prejudice, and male chauvinism must be torn out by the roots. For us,
proletarianization means recognizing the urgency of revolution as the only
solution to our own problems and the survival of all oppressed people. It
means commitment, casting our lot with the collective interest and
discarding the privileges of empire. It means recognizing that revolution is a
lifetime of fighting and transformation , a risky business and ultimately a
decisive struggle against the forces of death.
Proletarianization is a process that is necessarily on-going.
Breaking-thru to a higher levelof engagementand commitment in 1968 is no
guarantee that the level will he sustained in 1974. Standing still over time is
sliding back. Commitment and engagement must be continually renewed.
145
We create the seeds of the new society in the struggle for the
destruction of the empire. For our generation that has meant the birth of
commurtalism and collective work in the most individualist, competitive
society in the world. Revolution is the midwife bringing the new society into
being from the old.
The culture of our communities, the people we try to become, are
forged in the process of revolutionary war —the struggle for liberation. We
are called on to commit ourselves to this struggle, and time is pressing.
People are already dying. Lives are wasted and worn. Life itself depends on
our ability to deal a swift death blow to the monster.
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149
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
These books have been a good part of the background and basis of study for
writing this paper;
Salvador Allende
Imamu Amiri Baraka
Harold Baron
Raymond Barrio
Black Liberation Army
James Boggs
Boyer and Moraid
FredBranfman,ed.
H. Rap Brown
Wilfred Burchett
Meyer Burning Bear
Amilcar Cabral
ToniCade, ed,
Stokely Carmichael
Fidel Castro
Christopher Caudwell
Sharon Curtin
W.E.B.DuBois
Ehrenreich and English
Frederick Engels,
Eleanor Leacock, ed.
Franz Fanon
Carlos Feliciano
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
James Forman
Eduardo Galea no
JohnGerassi, ed.
Vo Nguyen Giap
Rudolfo Gonzalez
Felix Greene
Che Guevara
Speech to the U.N., November 1972
Raise Race Rays Raze
Black Labor
The Plum Plum Pickers
Break de Chains
Racism and the Class Struggle
Labor's Untold Story
Voices from the Plain of Jars
Die Nigger Die
Vietnam Will Win
New Indian Resistance
Return to the Source
Revolution in Guine
The Black Woman
Stokely Speaks
Fidel in Chile
History will Absolve Me
Studies in a Dying Culture
Nobody Ever Died of Old Age
Black Reconstruction
John Brown
Witches, Midwives and Healers
Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
The Wretched of the Earth
Carlos Feliciano
Rebel Girl
The Making of Black Revolutionaries
Open Veins of Latin America
The Coming of the New International
The Military Art of Peoples War
Yo Soy Joaquin
The Enemy
Message to the Tricontinental
150
Lorraine Hansberry
Ho Chi Minh
Bernard Fall, ed.
Indochina Peace Campaign
George Jackson
C.L.R.. James
Kathy Kahn
Aileen S. Kraditor
Les Blancs
History of the Vietnam Workers Party
Prison Diary
Ho Chi Minh on Revolution
Women Under Torture
Blood in My Eye
The Atlantic Slave Trade
Hillbilly Women
Ideas of the Women's Suffrage Movement
Latin American Council of Coordination statement
V.I. Lenin
Gerda Lerner, ed.
Artredo Lopez
Clayton Van Lydegraf
Harry Magdoff
Malcolm X
Mao Tse-Tung
Karl Marx
MIR,Tupamaros, ERP
and ELN.
Imperialism
State and Revolution
What is to be Done?
Selected Works
Black Women in White America
Puerto Rican Papers
Object is to Win and Movement and the Workers
The Age of Imperialism
Malcolm X Speaks
Malcolm X on Afro-American History
On Contradiction
On Practice
Selected Works
Capital (section on primitive accumulation)
Communist Manifesto
Value, Price and Profit
Selected Works
The Political Economy of Population
Control in Latin America
Pre-Civil War Black Nationalism
Letters from Attica
Women's Estate
Coming of Age in Mississippi
Angkor
The R ight of Revolution
Look tor Me hi the Whirlwind
The Way He Lived
Mythology of Imperialism
Insurste rtt Mexico
Bonnie Mass
William McAdoo
Sam Melville
Juliet Mitchell
Anne Moody
Jan Myrdal and Gun Kessle
Truman Nelson
Panther 21
Pham Thi Quyen
Jonah Raskin
John Reed
Report of the Chinese Communist Part}- to the 'i Oth Pariy Congress
Sheila Rowbothan Women. Resistance and Revolution
Mari Sandoz
Crazy Horse
151
Miriam Schneir, ed.
Miriam and Walter Schneir
Ruth Sidel
Edgar Snow
Stan Steiner
Han Suyin
Paul Sweezv and Harry Maedoff
Feminism: the Essential Historical Wriv:
Invitation to an Inm
Women-and Child Care i:i H:
The Long Rev<.>iL!i
The Mornivis Oil
Dynamics of CS i";u-itsi
Studs Terkel
Truong Chinh
Fawaz Turki
Eric William d
On the Role and Tasks of the I. 'rdtcd
Akwesasne Notes
Black Scholar
MER.IP Reports
Monthly Review
NACLA Reports
Triple Jeopardy
Vietnamese Studies
The D;.?iri
CapitaihiN ana
':a
152
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